JAPAN REFERENCE 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 





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WEST AND BY EAST 



BY 



LEONARD EATON SMITH 



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Ube ftnicFserboc^er iptess 
1900 



JAPAN REFERENCE 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 



FILIUS LIBELLUM 

QUOD PATRI DEDICARE SPERABAM 

NUNC PATRIS MEMORIAE 

DEDICO 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 






PAGE 


I. 


Outwards i 


II. 


The Pacific . 




• 19 


III. 


Yokohama 






• 30 


IV. 


A Japanese Street 






41 


V. 


Kamakura and Eynoshima 






46 


VI. 


NiKKO ._ . . . 






61 


VII. 


TOKIO .... 






80 


VIII. 


Matsuda Entertains . 






• 95 


IX. 


MiYANOSHITA 






103 


X. 


Kioto .... 






122 


XI. 


Homewards . 






• I4S 



WEST AND BY EAST. 



CHAPTER I. 

OUTWARDS. 

IN June, 1897, I came down from Oxford, and 
my long-cherished desire to travel could be 
granted. For various reasons the complete grand 
tour was impracticable, but a visit to the United 
States was easily— almost necessarily — extended 
into a trip to Japan. 

My outward route was to be from Liverpool 
direct to Quebec or Montreal by sea, overland to 
Vancouver, and thence to Yokohama, returning 
by Hawaii to San Francisco, so to New York 
and home. 

I left Liverpool on Thursday, August 19th, in 
the Labrador, She carried about one hundred 
and fifty first-class passengers, a larger number 
than she had ever before had on board. I had 
applied very late for a berth, and at first thought 
I could not get one, but at the last moment a 



2 West and by East 

berth was given up in one of the best rooms in 
the ship, and I tumbled into it. The pressure 
was due partly to the number of Canadians return- 
ing from the Jubilee, partly to the crowd of doc- 
tors, thirty-four or thereabouts, going out to the 
Medical Congress in Montreal. 

The weather as we left the Landing-stage was 
brilliant, and later on the sunset over the Welsh 
hills was very beautiful, and we were therefore 
rather disgusted on coming on deck the following 
morning in Lough Foyle to find a boisterous wind 
and the hills draped in long trails of mist. We 
lay at anchor for some time till the tug arrived 
bearing the mails and the most distinguished of 
our passengers. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his party. 
Soon we were past the long spit of sand which 
protects the mouth of the lough and diving into 
the long westerly swell. As our ship was light it 
did not take much to make her pitch, and before 
night many of the passengers were unable to en- 
joy the rugged outlines of the mountains of the 
Irish coast. Later in the afternoon we passed 
between the mainland and Tory Island, a rocky, 
desolate island against which the waves were 
dashing high in the bright sunshine, and whose 
white-walled lighthouse seemed a strangely for- 
saken outpost of civilisation. 

Our course lay far to the north, coming within 
two hundred miles of Greenland, and the weather 



Outwards 3 

was uncomfortable, cold, rainy, windy, though 
for the most part not technically bad. But the 
passengers were a very sociable community, the 
doctors especially being in very high spirits, as 
befitted a holiday trip, slightly tempered by the 
prospect of technical papers and discussions. On 
Tuesday we sighted several icebergs of respect- 
able size. The weather was then cold and clear, 
and the sun bright, and as we steamed past we 
could see deep blue shadows in the clefts of the 
ice exactly similar to those that lie in the crevasses 
of a glacier. 

On Wednesday night we crept cautiously 
through the Straits ot Belle Isle, and early on 
Thursday morning were well in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence. Before evening we were wrapped in 
the fog that haunts all this region, — the evening 
of all others that was fixed for the inevitable con- 
cert. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had been more 
or less incapacitated all the voyage by sea-sickness 
— (** And a very good thing for him too,'* said 
all the doctors, '* after all the banquets and din- 
ners he has had to attend ") — took the chair. 
The constantly recurring blasts of the fog-horn 
marred what was otherwise a good average steamer 
concert. 

On Friday morning a long line of low wooded 
hills lay close on our port side, and then the 
Labrador coast to the north could be made out 



4 West and by East 

gradually drawing closer, so that by night we 
were fairly in the River St. Lawrence. We had 
all day been so near to the shore that we could 
make out the houses. They were at first few 
and far between, then they became more fre- 
quent, till as night fell they formed one almost 
continuous line. Soon after dark we stopped 
off Rimouski, where the mails go ashore. As we 
lay there the scent of the land came down the 
great river very sweet and grateful. Away to 
the south bonfires were blazing, rockets and 
Roman candles soaring in honour of Laurier*s re- 
turn, but we were now so far from the shore that 
it took us some time to make out just what 
were these queer little moving lights in the dis- 
tance. Then a tug came out of the darkness, 
laden with a deputation of welcome, the saloon 
was filled with an enthusiastic crowd, and there 
followed much speechifying in French. 

On Saturday I woke to find that we were just 
approaching Quebec, getting up steam after 
Laurier's departure in a tender. His formal 
welcome home was not yet, and so he must not 
take the edge off it by landing at the public quay. 
A few minutes afterwards we were moored along- 
side the wharf, and had one hour and a half to 
see what we could of the fascinating city. For 
myself, I took a calbche, a one-horse vehicle with 
a gig body and a hood, hung on C springs and 



Outwards 5 

straps between two very high wheels. The body 
holds two people, and the driver sits on a little 
seat on top of what should be the dashboard. 
The horses are strong and excellent, and it is well 
they are for the hills are something to marvel at. 
The motion is distinctly buoyant and erratic, but 
very enjoyable. I went up to the citadel and 
saw the antiquated guns mounted there, and the 
superb view of the city clinging to the slopes of the 
hill, of the broad river sweeping away in a mag- 
nificent curve, and of the opposite island and hills. 
I had at first intended to land at Quebec and 
go up to Montreal by rail, but during the voyage 
changed my mind. I am very glad I did, as the 
sail up the river to Montreal is beautiful. We 
left Quebec at about 10.30 A.M., and went on till 
dusk, anchoring for the night at Three Rivers. 
The banks are not very high, and on either side 
there is an almost continuous row of strangely 
foreign-looking houses, interspersed with churches 
whose bulbous spires seemed thousands of miles 
away from their real home. In one place the 
river expands into a broad lake, where the chan- 
nel is marked at night by the quaintest little 
light-vessels. The channel is in the day marked 
all the way up by a row of fir trees tied to posts 
on the one side and a row of plain posts on the 
other. In some places it is very narrow and the 
current swift, and it was in one such place we 



6 West and by East 

met the Scotsman of the same line, homeward 
bound. We seemed to sweep past one another 
at a tremendous speed. Both the Labrador and 
the Scotsman have since been cast away, the 
former off the coast of Scotland, the latter in the 
Straits of Belle Isle, not far from Labrador. 

The night was memorable from the splendour 
of the stars, enhanced by the faint flickering of 
the Northern Lights. 

Sunday morning, the 29th, found us at Mon- 
treal. It seemed to be almost always my fate to 
reach places by steamer in the early morning, and 
generally my first impressions of a port were as- 
sociated with a hasty packing and a scrambled 
breakfast at eight o'clock at the latest. 

Owing to the Medical Congress, the Windsor 
Hotel was very full, and the only room I could 
get was, I trust, the worst one in the house — and 
that only for one night. However, owing to the 
kindness of some steamer friends, I was taken to 
lunch at the St. James's Club and then to dine at 
the Forest and Stream Club, a country club some 
miles from the city. There we dined in an upper 
room whose open windows looked over the St. 
Lawrence, at this point broadened out into a 
lake. The waiters were dressed in white duck, 
and altogether the contrast with the hot and 
noisy hotel was very refreshing. 

The next day I went to visit some cousins 



Outwards 7 

who lived not far from Ottawa. Their house lay 
twelve miles from the railway near some phos- 
phate mines which had originally brought my 
uncle, a mining engineer, to the spot. It seemed 
a very out-of-the-world place. There I was for 
two nights, and then taking the morning train 
to Ottawa caught the Pacific Express. My next 
stopping-place was to be Rat Portage, a mining 
town at the head of the Lake of the Woods, 
about five hours east of Winnipeg. The journey 
took about forty-eight hours and was not very 
interesting. The scenery was monotonous. 
There was mile after mile of young forest grow- 
ing up round the charred and unsightly remnants 
of an older one, which fire had destroyed. The 
rock seemed always near the surface and cropped 
out constantly. The whole aspect was desolate, 
but with a redeeming feature — the numerous 
and impressive rivers and lakes. 

For one afternoon we skirted the northern 
shore of Lake Superior. It is a fine bluff coast 
running out into many peninsulas and fringed 
with islands. It is hard to realize that it is the 
shore of a lake only, as the water stretches away 
in front and on either hand to an unbroken hori- 
zon. The railway line imitates the curves of the 
shore, following the little creeks up to a point 
where a bridge can be easily thrown across , and 
then turning lakewards again. 



8 West and by East 

We reached Rat Portage at about half-past 
nine on Friday morning. Here I expected to 
meet my uncle, who was opening up a mine in 
the neighbourhood. I had both written and 
telegraphed to him. I was therefore rather sur- 
prised on my arrival to find neither him nor any 
word from him. At the hotel where he put up 
they only knew that he had gone up the lake to 
the mine a day or two ago, that he might not 
be back for some days, that it was forty miles to 
the mine by water, but that a boat might come 
down from there during the day if I would wait. 
There was nothing else to do, as his office was 
locked up. There was only one through train 
each way a day and I had engaged a berth on 
Monday's train as far as Banff. The attractions 
of the place were soon exhausted. The town 
was very new and raw-looking, with raised wooden 
sidewalks lined with all manner of drinking places 
and '* lunch-rooms open all night.'* There were 
several respectable-looking churches, the most 
impressive being the Roman Catholic. There 
was electric light everywhere and telephone, but 
unpaved streets; an opera house, a little wharf, 
and various assay offices. The weather had been 
fine ever since landing, but now it became un- 
pleasantly hot, 90° in the shade, though it was 
the 4th of September. The hotel was preten- 
tious but comfortless. The large entrance hall 



Outwards 9 

or office was furnished with many rocking-chairs 
and spittoons and flies innumerable. Behind 
the desk stood the proprietor (also the epony- 
mous hero of the hotel according to custom 
in these parts), a prosperous-looking Hungar- 
ian. People strolled in and out all day, sat and 
rocked and smoked for a little, and generally 
retired down-stairs for a moment with the pro- 
prietor to reappear shortly wiping their mous- 
taches. There was nothing to do but to sit 
there waiting for somebody or something to 
turn up, afraid to go away lest the opportunity 
should come and be lost, watching the legions 
of flies buzzing on the windows, and the sunshine 
blazing down on the patch of road visible under 
the awnings. 

The situation remained unchanged all day, and 
when a hot night succeeded to the hot day I went 
early to bed. An hour or two after, while the 
heat still kept me awake, there came a knock at 
the door and a note fluttered in through the tran- 
som. Then matters were explained. The launch 
belonging to the mine was undergoing repairs so 
that they had been unable for some days to send 
in to the town and had thus not received either 
my letter or telegram. But as it was necessary 
to get more stores they had borrowed a boat and 
in it had come my uncle's man of business with 
a letter to me in case I had arrived. My uncle 



lo West and by East 

expected me about this time but was uncertain 
to a few days. 

On Saturday about one o^clock, after waiting 
some hours for the supplies, we started in the 
Norahy a dumpy little steamer like a small white 
tug. At the last moment we took on board a 
couple of prospectors with a canoe and a fine set- 
ter. They were going our way and as boats are so 
rare on the lake this system of free passages is 
quite usual. I found my companion was an old 
naval man and full of excellent yarns which served 
to wile away the journey — a journey unduly pro- 
tracted by the fact that the Norah had a bearing 
which at intervals became heated and forced us 
to stop. The lake is filled with innumerable 
islands and the shore curves away in all manner 
of fantastic peninsulas so that sometimes the 
actual water route between two points must be 
twice as long as the distance in a straight line. 
It is never possible to see very far owing to the 
many islands, and they all look so much alike 
that it would be very easy to get hopelessly 
lost. The land seems everywhere very rocky, 
the islands rising rather sharply from the water 
covered with a scrubby growth of trees. We 
saw hardly a sign of life when we had once got a 
few miles from Rat Portage and away from the 
summer villas of well-to-do Winnipeg folk that 
dot the near-by islands. In one place we passed 



Outwards 1 1 

a couple of houses surrounded by farm lands all 
cleared and tilled by a couple of Danish families. 
We saw a few deserted wigwams, a kingfisher, 
and a few other birds, otherwise we might have 
been in a land completely lifeless. Toward sun- 
set we wriggled through a very tortuous and 
shallow channel into one of the great bays — Shoal 
Bay, — and before long the camp came in sight, 
and we made fast to the little wharf. 

I had had visions of sleeping in the open round 
a camp-fire, and here I found a couple of large sub- 
stantial log buildings, one for the men and the 
other for my uncle and his assistants. Here the 
walls were lined with cartridge paper ; there were a 
stove, civilised beds, chairs, drawing-tables, in 
fact, luxury. I was, however, given a bunk, a 
wooden shelf, and it certainly was the hardest 
bed I have slept upon. They thought it would 
add a touch of local colour to my remembrances 
of the place. I could only stay the one night, so 
the next morning we spent in looking at the 
workings which were just begun, and soon after 
a midday dinner the naval man and I started 
back for the high civilisation of Rat Portage. 

I could have spent several days at the camp 
very pleasantly if it had not been for the food, 
and it would have taken many days for me to get 
used to that. We took our meals in the men's 
dining-room when they had finished. The tables 



12 West and by East 

were covered with American cloth and at each 
place was laid a tin plate upside down with the 
knife and fork neatly crossed on top. The menu, 
largely made up of canned things, was varied, but 
the general greasiness was terrible. The taste 
and feel of melted butter pervaded everything, 
the food, the plates, the tables, finally one's per- 
son, and melted butter so universally used is 
palling. To add to this, for one meal, the cook 
made a juicy apple pie in a perforated iron dish, 
and the result when the under-crust was cut 
must have come up to his more ample humorous 
expectations. The return journey was faster than 
the outward one as the bearing had been attended 
to, but it was late when we reached Rat Portage 
and a full moon was shining. As we cut through 
the dark, still water we could see the clouds re- 
flected so clearly that we appeared to be sailing 
in the air miles above them, and it seemed neces- 
sary to use great caution in approaching the side, 
lest instead of falling two feet into the water we 
might fall into space forever. 

Next morning, being Monday, I '* boarded '' 
the Pacific Express (to use the technical phrase of 
this continent) and bade farewell to the Lake-of- 
the-Woods and its gold mines. 

My next resting-place was to be Banff, nearly 
forty-eight hours farther on. We stopped for 
an hour and a half at Winnipeg which is the C. 



Outwards 13 

P. R. half-way house. It happened to be Labour 
Day and therefore all the shops were shut. There 
is one broad street with many stone and brick 
buildings, notably the City Hall and Post-Office, 
and nearer the river are many pleasant little villas 
and the Provincial Parliament Houses — a large, 
low white building rather like a foreign hotel. 

After Winnipeg the scenery changed, and from 
there to the Rockies there was nothing but prairie. 
The soil where it was turned up shewed black and 
rich, but soon all signs of cultivation died away. 
At intervals we stopped at a little station, from 
which a double line of wooden houses ran away 
at right angles to the track, a town with no visible 
raison d' etre on the prairie which encircled it on 
every side. Between these stations we saw no 
sign of life but the little gophers who sat up and 
begged till the train was almost past them, and 
then disappeared with a flirt of their tufted tails. 
Sometimes a badger trotted past with a pre- 
occupied expression, or a gaunt wolf skulked 
away from our intruding presence, while over- 
head soared and wheeled great fish-hawks which 
only repeated admonition from the learned could 
prevent our ignorance from calling eagles. Once 
for many miles we ran alongside of the old 
emigrant trail, a broad and many-rutted track. 
The low rolling hills of the prairie were crossed 
and seamed in all directions by little paths like 



14 West and by East 

sheep - tracks and pitted with small hollows. 
These are the old tracks and '* wallows " of the 
buffaloes, and with the bones and skulls piled up 
at some of the stations are now their only relics on 
these prairies. Yet another relic of the old state 
of things we saw in the few disreputable Indians 
hanging round the stations offering for sale mar- 
vellous arrangements of horns. 

You felt when you were again on the train after 
alighting at one of the wayside stations that you 
had returned to civilisation, and that the train 
was your only link with contemporary affairs and 
your only assurance that the world was not all 
prairie. It was the same feeling, though the con- 
trast was not quite so sharp, as on a great steamer 
when some stormy night you leave the flying 
spray, the rushing wind, and the general turmoil 
on deck and go down to the imperturbable hotel- 
life, the lights, and the luxuries below. 

We reached Banff about seven o'clock on Wed- 
nesday morning, having climbed during the night 
through the lower spurs of the Rockies. Here 
there is an excellent C. P. R. hotel, set at the 
crossing of two valleys so as to command fine 
views in every direction of the hills, to which a 
light fall of snow in the night had given a fic- 
titious grandeur. The region is covered with 
pine forests and is laid out as a natural park, 
and a couple of days passed away there very 



Outwards 15 

pleasantly and easily. On Friday morning early 
we had to go down to catch the train, which in- 
considerately kept us waiting an hour in the frost 
before the sun got down into the valley. From 
Banff to the coast the scenery is grand beyond 
description. First we crossed the great divide 
and with most elaborate precaution slid down the 
western slope of the Rockies. Then we toiled 
at some twelve miles an hour up the Selkirks, 
the track keeping at one stiff, relentless gradient 
so that at starting it always seemed even odds 
whether the engines would start us upward or the 
weight of the cars, now the brakes were released, 
would drag us down. The slopes of the hills were 
covered with magnificent conifers, each of which 
at home would have been a much-prized treasure, 
and at this high altitude the undergrowth was 
already showing autumn colouring. The line 
finally reached a little level place at the top of 
the pass between two towering snow peaks, Sir 
Donald and the Hermit — a pause before it plunged 
down again. The view hereabouts was always 
liable to be ruthlessly interrupted by the massive 
snow-sheds which cover many miles of the track. 
The scenery was as fine as that of Switzerland 
and of much the same character; the mountains 
rose one behind the other in splendid masses, 
and then some sudden turn opened a long valley 
leading straight up to a great snow peak or the 



1 6 West and by East 

gleaming glacier of the Selkirks. As the line 
climbed to cross the Selkirks the turbulent river 
at the bottom of the valley grew smaller and 
smaller, and the tributary streams were spanned 
by bridges whose height grew steadily taller till 
at last it was tremendous. This seemed so espe- 
cially where the old wooden trestles had not been 
replaced by iron girders, and looking out of the 
car window you saw no sign of a bridge but only 
the great drop. The line was a marvel of en- 
gineering; sometimes we could see it ahead of us 
on two or three different levels. It wound and 
doubled, turned in the shortest of curves, and 
crossed many high and creaking wooden trestles, 
and finally took to the narrow gorge of the Fraser 
River. Here in the muddy water we could see 
the red backs of the salmon huddling in scores 
behind every rock, and all the side streams where 
there was not enough water to cover their fins 
were alive with them. 

Finally a few hours before we reached Van- 
couver we ran into a plain country with broad, 
smooth-flowing rivers, while as a background rose 
the white-capped wall of the Selkirks as the Alps 
guard Lombardy. 

About one o'clock on Saturday the train came 
to a standstill on a wharf beside which lay several 
ocean steamers. A beautiful harbour surrounded 
by hills and apparently without an exit lay to 



Outwards 17 

our right. We had reached Vancouver and the 
Pacific. 

The C. P. R. , which had brought us so far, could 
not in point of splendour or elaborate equipment 
challenge competition with some of the lines in 
the United States and their advertisement trains. 
But they certainly made us comfortable. Their 
object was evidently to encourage the tourist 
traffic, and they sometimes went rather out of 
their way to do so. For instance, no dining-car 
was taken over the mountains, but instead meals 
were provided at little chalets at certain intervals. 
These chalets were prettily built, set among trim 
lawns, gay flower-beds, and fountains. A certain 
time was allowed for the meal, but if any passen- 
ger was dilatory the train would wait for him. 
The schedule pace was so slow as to allow of such 
liberties. The mountain hotels, too, were very 
good, in spite of the great distances from which 
all stores had to be transported. Then the C. P. 
R. time-table was excellent, giving, besides the 
dry bones of starting and arrival times, a concise 
description of the country traversed, the whole 
making a respectable pamphlet. 

Here at Vancouver was another C. P. R. hotel, 
also good. The town is interesting for its queer 
contrasts. In some ways it seems quite English, 
especially because of the fences round the well- 
cared-for gardens. But then the mild climate 



1 8 West and by East 

allows many things to grow not seen at home. 
The streets have the look of any new town of 
rapid growth in Canada or the United States, 
while the many Chinamen remind you that you 
are on the Pacific slope. Victoria, the elderly 
and stately rival of Vancouver, is said to be more 
English than England. Certainly Vancouver is 
more English than many Canadian towns farther 
east. 

I was taken to Stanley Park, the public park of 
the town, lying on a promontory in the harbour. 
Here the original forest has as far as possible been 
left undisturbed. There are a few carriage roads 
and some paths cut through the undergrowth be- 
tween the enormous Douglas firs which are the 
pride of the town. I called at various houses and 
was initiated into the virtues and vices of the 
Chinese ** boy " or servant. I went to the Club 
and saw the Empress of China, in which I was to 
sail, lying apparently at the foot of the lawn. I 
could hear all over the town the hours struck on 
her bell, and had no chance to forget her presence 
and the fact that she sailed on Monday morning. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PACIFIC 

MONDAY morning, therefore, the 13th of 
September, found me and my traps on 
board the Empress ready to go still farther 
westwards, forty-two hundred miles, to the fas- 
cinating islands of Japan. 

The Empress of China, like her sister Empresses, 
has the lines of a yacht, two funnels and four 
masts, a white hull with yellow upper works, twin 
screws, and a nominal speed of nineteen knots. 
As a matter of fact, the Empresses usually go only 
some fourteen and a half or fifteen knots, and 
even so cross the Pacific in a couple of days less 
than any other line. This method allows them 
to run up to time with the certainty of a railway 
train.- The officers and all the deck-hands of the 
Empress of China are R. N. R. men and English, 
the stewards and firemen Chinese. The saloon 
is on the upper deck, and so far forward that it is 
rather given to dancing, a tendency still more 
marked in the library, which is im.mediately above 
it. Most of the cabins are on the main deck 

19 



20 West and by East 

below the saloon, but there is also a row on either 
side on the saloon deck opening into alleyways 
covered in forward and at the side but open aft. 
On the starboard side these cabins are occupied 
by officers, on the port side by the single men 
among the passengers. I was in one of the latter. 
In hot weather they would probably be cool, as 
in cool weather they are distinctly cold, and my 
cabin companion was an enthusiast for fresh air. 
In wet and dirty weather, too, any chance water 
there might be on the promenade or boat decks 
found its way into the scuppers of our alleyway, 
to form a brawling brook whose music did not 
bring sleep. However, she is a fine boat, with a 
pleasant spaciousness in her passages and state- 
rooms. 

The weather was splendid when we went aboard 
and the hill -locked harbour looked beautiful. 
The deck was alive with children, principally be- 
longing to missionaries. At one gang-plank an 
officer superintended the arrival of the cabin 
passengers and their baggage; at another, the 
Chinese steerage, of whom we had some four 
hundred, were hustled on board with the cere- 
mony and commotion customary in embarking 
pigs. 

About two o'clock we cast loose, and with a 
leadsman in the chains on either side felt our 
way down to Victoria between many beautiful 



The Pacific 21 



headlands into the heart of a gorgeous sunset. 
At Victoria some further passengers joined us, 
and by eight o'clock we were fairly started on 
the voyage. 

One sea voyage in northern latitudes is very 
much like another, and in spite of names one 
ocean is very much like another. The Northern 
Pacific seemed just as cold and grey and stormy 
as the North Atlantic. Experts indeed declare 
that though the seas in the Pacific are larger they 
yet run more true, so there does not seem much 
to choose. The chief impression the Pacific gives 
is one of loneliness ; in all the thirteen days of our 
voyage we saw only one ship — a sealing schooner. 
If the weather had been more propitious we should 
have run far enough north to sight the Aleutian 
Islands, but as it was we gave them a forty-mile 
berth. Some small albatross— called commonly 
Toots — followed us all the way; a few flying-fish 
were seen the day before we reached Japan, and 
that is about the list of the sights. 

Considering that we had chosen to cross just at 
the time of the equinox, our weather was very 
fair. Some days were beautiful, but as it was the 
north wind which brought the clear weather the 
fine days were also the cold days. There was a 
small blow three days out which, made the ship 
do a good deal of ** cinder-shifting'* or cork- 
screw motion. As we were going westward our 



22 West and by East 

days were of twenty-four and a half hours each, 
and then on crossing longitude i8o° we had to 
omit one entire day. We leapt from Sunday 
night, the 19th of September, to Tuesday, the 
2ist, from moderate weather into what the chief- 
engineer in a very unguarded moment called a 
gale of wind — so be sure it was. Some wag said, 
** Yesterday was worse than this, so they left it 
out.'* It was a magnificent sight to see the great 
seas go swinging past under the blue sky and 
bright sun, the wind cutting their crests off and 
whisking them away in hissing spray. But even 
such grand sights pall when there is no means of 
getting away from them. The constant plunging 
of the ship, the incessant wear and strain and 
creak, the perfect impossibility of finding a quiet 
corner anywhere grew wearisome in time, and we 
were all glad when the weather moderated in the 
evening; all, that is, except a few enthusiasts 
whom we eyed with suspicion and pity. 

The month of September is the month when 
typhoons are most to be feared on the coast of 
Japan. Personally I am quite willing to take my 
experiences of them at second hand, judging of 
their terrors from the respectful way in which 
naval men and seafaring men generally on the 
Pacific coast speak of them, especially those who 
happen ever to have met with one. All the voy- 
age we felt that a typhoon just one or two days 



The Pacific ^ 23 

from Yokohama might be reserved for us as a 
finale. Happily we did not actually encounter 
one, but we only just missed it. Three days be- 
fore the end of the voyage we waked to find the 
horizon clouded with mist and the whole ship 
clammy with moisture. The air was warm and 
enervating, and though there was hardly any 
wind a big sea was running from the S.W., 
making the ship roll and pitch at the same time. 
About noon we ran into a fog-bank, and for 
form's sake blew our whistle a couple of times, 
though there was not much fear of meeting any- 
thing on that desolate ocean. This brought us 
out from the smoking-room to see what was the 
matter and to witness a sudden transformation 
scene. The smoke, which had been hanging over 
the starboard quarter, veered suddenly to the port 
quarter and we ran into bright sun and blue sea, 
already beginning to whiten under a stiff N. E. 
breeze. The fog-bank lay like a dark curtain 
behind us. The meaning of all this was that we 
had come near a typhoon. Happily the captain 
had noticed its approach in time, and by altering 
our course a little in the night had let the centre 
pass, so that we came in for the extreme fringe 
only. That night it was blowing a gale from the 
N.E. This was the night fixed for the concert, 
for which a lengthy programme had been pre- 
pared. The weather, however, put a great many 



24 West and by East 

of the intending performers hors-de-combat and 
sadly thinned the ranks of the audience. In spite 
of this it was a very enjoyable function, and 
rather above the average of such concerts. There 
were two instrumental trios, one for strings by 
the second steward and two sailors, one for two 
flutes and a mandolin by two passengers and the 
purser. The doctor, who was principally respon- 
sible for the getting up of the concert, sang an 
excellent comic song in costume. The antics of 
the ship made it very difficult for the singers both 
to sing and to keep their balance and to find 
breath for both these things at the same time. 
In the middle of the concert there was a present- 
ation of prizesgained in the deck sports and in vari- 
ous tournaments at whist, chess, and other games. 
These sports had been the principal event of 
the voyage and had served to kill a great deal of 
time. I happened to be one of the committee 
of management. The other members were a mis- 
sionary, who hardly ever turned up at the meet- 
ings, being generally hors-de-co7nbat ; a gentleman 
from Montreal, of whom I shall have much to 
say, and whom, on the analogy of the Scotch 
fashion, I propose to call Mr. Montreal ; a young 
M.P., whose name is known everywhere in con- 
nection with a necessary laundry article, and 
whom we elected chairman; the ship*s doctor; 
and the third officer, a man of great experience 



The Pacific 25 

in such matters. The meetings of the committee 
were numerous and very welcome as filling up 
several days of dreary weather. We flattered 
ourselves that we managed the sports very well, 
and certainly they went without a hitch. The 
actual sports occupied two afternoons. The 
events were rather such as to amuse the audience 
than to test the athletic power of the competitors. 
This could not be said, however, of the obstacle 
race, for which the chief officer set a distinctly 
stiff course involving a good deal of rope-climbing. 
Beside the ordinary potato race, three-legged race, 
cock-fighting, and tug-of-war, there were some less 
common events. In one of these each man had 
to uncork and drink a bottle of aerated ivater, pick 
up a cigarette, and run down the deck to a lady 
who had to light it. The man first back with his 
cigarette alight was victor, sharing the prize with 
his lady lighter. Another amusing race was the 
post-office race, in which a number of men were 
placed at one end of the deck and at the other end 
a like number of parcels. Each parcel contained 
some garment, and each man must run to a parcel, 
open it, and run round the deckhouse, arriving 
with the garment on and properly fastened. In 
the final heat we put a complete costume in each 
parcel. Perhaps the best result was afforded by 
the man who ran second in the final, a solemn 
little man with black beard and gold spectacles. 



JAPAN REFZREMCE 
LIBRARY 

NEW YORK 



26 West and by East 

He came in in an old opera hat and dress coat, 
holding up the skirts of a petticoat — a sight for 
gods and men. The prizes were rather a puzzle 
to us, because people going to Japan do not 
have all manner of the little trinkets which the 
home-going tourist carries, and which could have 
been requisitioned. Finally we had to present the 
successful competitors with money. Owing to 
the exceptional circumstances we thought they 
would not thus lose their amateur status, and the 
understanding was strict that such money should 
be invested in a souvenir instantly on arrival in 
Japan. But for some of the events the doctor had 
contrived humorous and appropriate rewards, 
and these were presented at the concert amid 
great applause. I might add that the committee 
celebrated the conclusion of its labours by a din- 
ner given by the M.P. in the doctor's cabin. 
When the whole committee was at dinner the 
cabin was so full that the Chinese boys in waiting 
had to stand in the alleyway and hand the dishes 
through the door and windows. Except for the 
great diversion of the sports and the various 
tournaments in chess, etc., the voyage was not 
very lively. This was partly owing to the weather, 
which was dull, and made the smoking-room the 
best place in the ship, where were revealed to me 
the possibilities of the despised game of dominoes. 
It was also partly due to the fact that out of 120 



The Pacific 27 

passengers forty or more were missionaries and 
their children, who rather kept themselves to 
themselves, so that the whole company did not 
properly coalesce. Among the other passengers 
were a number of European residents in Japan and 
Shanghai returning to work after visits home, sev- 
eral men of business who had travelled the world 
over more than once and had strange tales to tell 
— one was from Boston on his way to see about 
some paper mills in Japan, fat and jolly, with a 
wonderful ring on his little finger. There were, 
too, a good many globe-trotters like myself. My 
cabin companion was an eccentric person. He 
had taken his degree at Cambridge and then been 
called to the Bar, but, I was told, had never prac- 
tised owing to conscientious scruples. Though 
probably under thirty he had let his hair and beard 
grow wild so as to almost hide a face of consider- 
able charm. His clothes, too, were frayed and 
fringed in a picturesque way which made all the 
ladies anxious to get at him with a darning-needle. 
Though very kind-hearted and well-meaning his 
conversation was almost nil, and his habits ec- 
centric and slovenly. But as he was always in bed 
before eleven and up at six it was not necessary to 
see much of him. He had been living at Victoria, 
and was there picked up by a lady going to join 
her husband in Japan, as tutor for her two boys. 
They were very sturdy-looking young rascals, 



28 West and by East 

about the last sort of pupils for such a tutor, as I 
think all parties soon found out. 

The only other events of note were the fire- 
and boat-drills and the inspection of the crew 
after morning service on Sunday. On one side 
of the deck stood the European sailors in R. N. 
R. uniform, and the Chinese firemen with pig- 
tails twisted round their heads, loose black jackets 
and trousers, and immaculate white socks and low 
shoes. On the other side was a row of stewards 
with pigtails hanging free, caps with coloured top- 
knots, frogged jackets, and trousers tied tight at the 
ankle, and again the immaculate white socks and 
low shoes. The long lines of spotless white socks 
had a very curious effect. The captain then led 
a glittering line of officers round to inspect the 
crew, while the long lines swayed to and fro as 
one man to the roll of the ship — for it always 
rolled on these occasions. 

On the evening of Sunday the 26th we picked 
up a light on the Japanese coast — one of the 
most pleasant sights one can see. During the 
night I woke to find the ship stopped, the wind 
rising, and the rain coming down in torrents, 
filling the ship with noise. It was very hot and 
sleep for a long time impossible. I heard after- 
wards — I do not know how true it was — that we 
had stopped because the rain was so blinding that 
we could not make the harbour. 



The Pacific 29 

Next morning about eight I came on deck to 
find a dull, misty morning, and the Empress pass- 
ing the breakwater on her way to her anchorage 
in Yokohama harbour. 



CHAPTER III 

YOKOHAMA 

YOKOHAMA lies about an hour's steaming 
up the Bay of Tokio. Where we lay low 
hills surrounded us in a fine sweep, but the larger 
hills behind were hidden by mist. The first view 
of Japan was not a very cheerful one, for the 
weather was threatening rain, which later in 
the day fell copiously. Off on the port side lay the 
town of low, tile-roofed buildings, with the trees 
and European houses on the bluff down the bay, 
and masses of shipping higher up. Almost op- 
posite us when I first came on deck the long 
breakwater which protects the anchorage on the 
south and east ran out. The port was full of ships, 
including several men-of-war of different nations, 
a French mail boat looking herself very like a man- 
of-war, a P. & O. boat, and many steamers flying 
the Japanese flag. There were also several fine 
sailing ships, some of which had brought out oil 
from America, and innumerable Japanese sailing 
craft. All around us as we moved slowly up the 
harbour the water was alive with steam launches 

30 



Yokohama 31 

and sampans. These latter are the ordinary 
small boats of the country. They seem to be flat- 
bottomed and in shape a long isosceles triangle, 
the stern forming a narrow base. They look as 
though the bows of a much larger boat had by 
some sort of fissiparous process broken off and 
started in life independently. Sometimes they 
are sailed with one lateen sail, but more often 
propelled with one or two long sweeps. These 
sweeps are made of pieces of wood spliced to- 
gether and look as though compounded of several 
short oars. They work in loops, and to prevent 
the inboard end swinging too far it is fastened by 
a cord-and-block arrangement similar to that on a 
horse's manger. One man works each oar stand- 
ing up facing the bow. The oar is never taken 
out of the water, but twisted from side to side as 
in sculling from the stern of a boat. 

As soon as we came to an anchor all these float- 
ing atoms came rushing to our sides, and soon 
the deck was alive with officials, friends, and 
bowing coolies. 

The Grand Hotel, to which most of us were 
going, had sent its launch to meet the steamer, 
and its porter, an American. To him we gave 
our keys and a description of our respective lug- 
gage, which turned up at the hotel a couple of 
hours later, having, nominally at least, been 
throucrh the Customs-House. I was landed in 



32 West and by East 

another launch belonging to a steamer friend 
who was in business in Yokohama. 

And was this really Japan which I had come 
ten thousand miles to see ? This sad-looking 
country with wharves and steamers, European 
buildings, and rain lying in puddles on a well- 
made road ? But then appeared an exaggerated 
go-cart drawn by a coolie in mushroom-shaped 
hat, bare legs, and a mackintosh cape. Into this 
rickshaw I climbed, and we splashed off down the 
bund to the hotel. The bund runs for about a 
mile along the edge of the harbour. On one side 
are large houses, most of them nowadays offices, 
though in one case at least the old fashion is still 
adhered to of manager's house, office, and godown 
all under the same roof. Several of them have 
large gardens in which they lie almost hidden. 
Here, too, are the principal hotel and the Club. 
On the other side of the road are a row of pines 
and a low retaining wall, and then the sea. 
Somehow at first it did not seem so strange to 
be in Japan, but rather as though I had ridden 
in a rickshaw all my life, watching the bobbing 
head before me and hearing the thud-thud of the 
sandalled feet. But these small pine trees with 
their fantastic curves and scanty branches brought 
the truth home to me. They were the pine trees 
of a Japanese fan, only actually growing. 

At the extreme end of the bund lies the Grand 



Yokohama 33 

Hotel, a large building of three stories, the newer 
part of stone, the older of brick, with deep ver- 
andas. It forms three sides of a square with the 
open side facing inland, and the courtyard thus 
formed is alive all day with rickshaws coming 
and going and at night with their flitting lanterns. 
The rooms and passages are large, so that the 
hotel does not accommodate as many people as its 
exterior would seem to promise. The two main 
rooms are the dining-room and the billiard-room. 
The latter contains half a dozen tables, and down 
one end runs a glittering bar, well patronised all 
day by people staying in the hotel and those from 
outside. The cooking is excellent, except the 
breakfasts, — which seem a weak point in Japan 
generally, — but most excellent is the curry. At all 
the hotels where I stayed in Japan which were run 
on European or semi-European lines the cooking 
was good, certainly much better than one had any 
right to expect, but almost everywhere the break- 
fast varied only from fish and steak to fish and 
chop, to fish and sausage, and back again to steak. 
On the other hand, the tiffins were always very 
good. To return from a gastronomic digression 
to the Grand Hotel, the manager is a Swiss — and 
is always in great form at meal-times, circulating 
from table to table, cracking little jokes with the 
ladies, asking if the dinner is satisfactory, and in 
case of complaint sharply rebuking the nearest 



34 West and by East 

waiter. The waiters wear white jackets, tight 
blue trousers, and sandals, and are very nimble, 
intelligent, and quiet. 

Though ** Grand Hotel charges ** are considered 
high in Yokohama, to the inexperienced person 
they seem cheap, five yen — or, at the present ex- 
change, about ten shillings — a day for full board, 
and that very good. The hot^l is run by a com- 
pany, and I believe pays a princely dividend. 

I have mentioned the manager, called ** Louis" 
by his intimates. He is small, of comfortable 
figure, always trimly dressed, and always, even 
when he appears at dinner-time in evening dress, 
with a skull-cap on his head. His whole souljs 
in the hotel, with the result that the management 
is excellent. I might tell one incident here to 
illustrate this, although it is quite out of place as 
regards time. My brother had stayed at the 
Grand Hotel some time before — I thought it was 
eighteen months before, on further reflection I 
found it to be twenty-seven — and on his depart- 
ure had left behind a large Cingalese brass tray. 
When I was about to leave home he asked me, if 
I was at the Grand Hotel, Yokohama, to inquire 
for the tray. He did not give me a very accurate 
idea of the tray nor of the box containing it. I 
thought it a hopeless inquiry to make, and so did 
not say anything on the subject till almost my 
last day in Japan. ** Louis " at once replied that 



Yokohama 35 

if it had been left at the hotel it must still be 
there. He accordingly sent a boy to the baggage- 
room, who returned with a large flat box. It 
was not quite the sort of box I had been led to 
expect, but on both sides was my brother's name, 
evidently in his handwriting. '' Louis " was sat- 
isfied of my honesty, and did not even ask me 
to open the box, which I sent to be forwarded 
home with my own things, and on arrival at home 
it was found to contain the much-travelled and 
patiently waiting brass tray. 

On my first arrival I was deposited at the door 
of the hotel opening on the bund. Getting out 
of a rickshaw is easier than getting in. The 
coolie simply lets down the shafts till they rest 
on the ground, giving the seat a very decided 
tilt forward, so that it is only with considerable 
difficulty that one can avoid getting out. I was 
given a large room facing the sea, in a gable, with 
windows on three sides, and two small beds. 
One window opened on to a small balcony, and 
afforded a fine view of the dreary, misty harbour 
and its shipping, with great hawks wheeling 
ceaselessly overhead. The other windows com- 
manded fine views of the hotel roof. 

My first visitor arrived very soon in the shape 
of a Chinese tailor, and when the first , had gone 
there came a second and a third. Each time I 
came back to Yokohama the ceremony was 



36 West and by East 

repeated. Each tailor carried a large bundle of 
samples of cloth. Each would commence by tell- 
ing me his name, — Chang Chow, Ah Sing, etc., 
as the case might be, — and proceed to offer me a 
suit very cheap, and, if this was denied, at least 
beg a suit ** for pleasure." This was what it 
sounded like to me from one man's lips, and 
puzzled me a good deal, till I realised that 
all he wanted was the favour of cleaning and 
pressing the clothes I had worn on shipboard. 
If everything else failed at least you must take 
his card, on which were displayed in more or less 
correct English his qualifications as tailor or dress- 
maker. This giving of cards is universal in Japan. 
Every shopkeeper whose store the tourist enters, 
every curio dealer vv^ho spreads his wares on the 
verandas or in the sitting-rooms of a hotel, has a 
pack of cards, one of which he thrusts on his 
actual or potential customer. And in the larger 
shops, in case of a deal taking place, this ceremony 
IS invariably followed by another ^ — the signature 
of a book; I suppose for the encouragement of 
future victims. 

My luggage turned up soon after I had got rid 
of the Chinese tailors, and then with Mr. Mon- 
treal I went to the British Consulate. There we 
produced our passports and applied for Japanese 
ones. Without a passport a traveller cannot 
leave the treaty ports to spend a night outside 



Yokohama 37 

their limits, nor 'buy a railway ticket for any 
length of journey, nor stay at a hotel outside a 
treaty town. Formerly it was necessary to define 
the proposed route and length of stay when ask- 
ing for a passport ; now they are issued generally 
for the whole island for six months. Our appli- 
cations were forwarded to Tokio, and next day 
the passports arrived, and we were made free of 
the island/ 

Then back to tiffin, which tasted specially good 
after thirteen days of ship's cooking, and after 
tiffin to the telegraph office to send a cable home 
to announce my arrival. It is perhaps interesting 
to mention that the directions on the telegraph 
forms are printed in two languages — Japanese 
and English. 

The streets of the settlement are not particu- 
larly interesting, because they are smooth and 
broad and lined with buildings partly or wholly 
European in style. Most of the buildings are 
only two stories high, because of the frequent 
earthquakes. In many of the shops all manner 
of European wares are to be got, though, of 
course, there is a substantial addition to the price 
to pay for the carriage. There are several large 
curio shops, but they seem to cater too much for 
the European market, with the result that most 

^ Passports are now, I believe, unnecessary (igoo). — L. E, S. 



38 West and by East 

of their goods are not very beautiful nor the best 
specimens of Japanese art. A number of small 
offices in the main street are occupied by money- 
changers, invariably Chinese. The Chinese in- 
deed are a good deal in evidence in Yokohama, 
and though in the war masses of Japanese beat 
masses of Chinese, yet the individual Chinaman 
seems a good match for the individual Japanese. 
At least this struck us when we saw some fat and 
prosperous Chinaman dragged in a rickshaw by a 
little perspiring coolie. In the banks, too, the 
tellers are Chinamen. This is probably partly 
due to the superior commercial honesty which in 
the Far East the Chinaman is as a rule acknow- 
ledged to possess as compared with the Japanese. 
These tellers do their reckoning with beads on 
wires in the primitive way, but are wonderfully 
expert, rattling the beads up and down at a pro- 
digious pace. 

During this slight digression I had got back to 
the hotel and joined a party to go up the Bluff, the 
hill on which most of the Europeans live. The 
pull up is steep, and we had to have two men to 
each rickshaw. They made the most of their 
exertions, grunting and groaning in chorus, so 
that we, quite new to this mode of travel, felt 
very sorry for them. On the Bluff are many 
pleasant, wide-spreading houses hidden in large 
gardens, fine, well-kept roads, and the public 



Yokohama 39 

Bluff gardens, prettily laid out and containing 
many beautiful conifers. 

On our way down by a different road from that 
by which we had climbed up we passed a temple 
where a funeral service was in progress. We 
went in to see what we could, but I do not recol- 
lect much about it except that there were two 
priests in gorgeous robes, chanting sadly, and 
that both by their vestments and their singing 
they strongly reminded me of some Roman 
Catholic ceremony. We passed through the 
native quarter on our way back. It is quite 
modern, as before 1854 Yokohama was an in- 
significant fishing village, and though it interested 
us greatly because of its novelty, it is not a very 
good specimen of a Japanese town. 

Before dinner we went off to the Empress, which 
was still lying in the harbour, to say good-bye to 
those friends who were still on board. But our 
touch of dry land had completely destroyed any 
lingering desire we might have had to voyage 
farther for the present, and I for one was very 
glad to let the Empress slip away after nightfall 
without me. 

Perhaps I have lingered too long over the first 
day in Japan, but of the first day there must al- 
ways be so much to tell. If many of the details 
seem trivial it is because the main facts can always 
be got up at home from books, but one only 



40 West and by East 

learns the details by actually going to the country, 
and therefore they are novel and interesting; and 
so this account will be largely a chronicle of such 
small beer of my own brew, and in no sense an 
account of Japan in general. 



CHAPTER IV 

A JAPANESE STREET 

NO description, however minute, can ever give 
an adequate idea of the streets of a foreign 
city to those who have never trod them. To do 
so would require a series of photographs, supple- 
mented by a phonograph and by some delicate 
instrument, not yet invented, to reproduce the 
smells of ^he place. For the smell is what gives 
the character to the place, and a faint whiff of 
some resembling odour can at once transport the 
possessor of a well-travelled nose to scenes thou- 
sands of miles distant. 

The average Japanese street is long, straight, 
and narrow, lined by houses of wood or stucco, 
which rise abruptly two or three stories from the 
earthen roadway. In Tokio, modern civilisation 
has thrust back the houses in the main thorough- 
fares so far as to leave a broad, uninteresting 
street studded with telegraph poles and scored 
with tram lines. 

The lower stories of the houses are open, with 
little eaves of ridge-and-furrow tiles projecting 

41 



42 West and by East 

over the opening to divert any drops which the 
upper eaves let fall. The floors within are raised 
some eighteen inches from the ground. They 
extend far backwards, expanses of speckless mat- 
ting, criss-crossed by the shining beams in which 
the sliding partitions run, but unincumbered with 
furniture. A few flat cushions and a vase of 
flowers are usually all the plenishings to be seen 
in addition to the ever-present brazier. This last 
is of metal or wood. It is filled with ashes, in 
the midst of which a few live charcoals smoulder. 
It serves as a kitchen range, a light-bearer for 
pipes, and a nucleus for family life. The vase of 
flowers is almost equally inevitable, and even in 
the poorest homes you can see some spray of 
flowers or leaves arranged with excellent taste 
in some holder selected to suit its particular curve 
and ** habit.'' Sometimes if the back of the 
house be open the view is closed by a glimpse of 
a little formal garden of tiny trees, boulders, and 
stone lanterns. But it is only dwelling-houses of 
the larger sort that present to the view such 
gleaming vistas. Generally the open house»front 
is filled in with some kind of shutter. A dwelling- 
house has sliding partitions of little square panes 
of paper framed in wood, and these at night are 
covered with solid wooden shutters. Other 
houses have sliding wooden lattices, and the 
workshops of carpenters and other craftsmen 



A Japanese Street 43 

have hanging curtains of split bamboo, behind 
which the men work in the scantiest of costumes. 
In the shops the wares are piled up from floor to 
ceiling in a semicircle, leaving just room for the 
tradesman to sit in the middle with his brazier 
and vase of flowers. 

In front of each shop swings a long sign, gen- 
erally of black with gold decorations, and in 
Kioto there is before every house a great paper 
lantern, three feet long, of the kind we call 
** Chinese." 

Between the rows of houses ebbs and flows a 
constant stream of foot-passengers. Horses are 
rare comparatively, though occasionally a cart 
passes drawn by a little high-crested pony just 
such as appears on the fans. Much more fre- 
quent are little carts pulled and pushed by men 
and women, heavy laden with merchandise. To 
an accompaniment of much shouting and grunt- 
ing the rickshaws thread their way in and out. 
A string of them passes containing a party of 
tourists and their guide; or a fat and command- 
ing-looking Chinaman is dragged by a little Jap- 
anese — a revenge for the late unpleasantness. 
In Tokio sometimes a double rickshaw is met 
with; these are rather for Japanese than Euro- 
peans however. The coolie will take papa^ 
mama, et bebd, if Japanese, who would look as- 
kance if asked to drag more than one European. 



44 West and by East 

The crowd is quiet, save for the shuffling of the 
pattens along the ground and the low murmur 
of voices. The general colour is a subdued one, 
as men and women wear chiefly dark greys and 
blues. Both men and women of the upper classes 
wear the kimono and a girdle. The women's 
girdle, the obi, is very broad, and expands be- 
hind into a preposterously big bow. Men, and 
women too, wear socks with a special place for the 
great toe, and the straps of the sandals or pattens 
pass one over the great toe and the other over 
the rest. The women still dress their hair in the 
old fashion with many pins and puffs, and rely 
upon a paper umbrella alone to ward off rain and 
sun. The men now wear their hair cut short, 
and often wear soft or hard felt hats to complete 
their Japanese costume at one extremity, as they 
use European socks and boots to clothe their 
feet, and the effect is not beautiful. 

The coolies* costume is a most excellent one 
to set off their fine figures. It consists of a short 
tunic folding over in front, tightly belted, and 
bare legs, or in winter long blue tights. The 
tunic is generally blue with a round, white design 
between the shoulders and some white ornaments 
round the skirt. The round figure is, I believe, 
the crest of the coolie's employer. One day j 
overtook in Yokohama an ox-cart beside which 
there strolled a coolie on whose back was the 



A Japanese Street 45 

device of an European firm of carriers, and round 
the skirt of his tunic, with unintended irony, in 
large white letters, the word *' Express." 

In and out among the crowd run numbers of 
children, reduced copies of their elders, only 
clothed in gay colours, and in the less progressive 
towns with heads partially shaved. There are 
few animals or birds to be seen, though some- 
times a couple of great hawks wheel and soar 
overhead. 

As night comes on lights gleam softly through 
the paper windows or from the hanging paper 
lanterns. In the more advanced towns gas and 
electricity supplement the older and more roman- 
tic form of_ lighting. The rickshaws flit about, 
each carrying a dangling paper lantern. A 
mournful flute-like piping tells that the old blind 
men who act as shampooers are ready and seek- 
ing for employment. Prudent citizens protect 
their frail paper windows with solid wooden shut- 
ters, and the town sinks to quietness and sleep. 



CHAPTER V 

KAMAKURA AND EYNOSHIMA 

THE next day, Tuesday, was fine, and we de- 
termined to take advantage of such good 
fortune to make a short excursion by way of 
occupation while deciding how to begin to really 
see Japan. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. 
Montreal and a lady travelling with them, whom 
I shall call Miss Brantford, and myself. With 
these same people I travelled for almost all the 
rest of my stay in Japan, and to their company is 
largely owing my enjoyment of my visit. 

Another very important person there was who 
also became a permanent member of our party. 
This was Matsuda, the guide. In Japan there is 
a guild of guides with regularly licensed mem- 
bers. The members are distributed among the 
principal tourist towns, and a list of the available 
guides appears in each hotel, and a guide may be 
engaged through the hotel-keeper. When once 
a guide is engaged he will travel anywhere with 
his party, because the guides in the different 
towns are members all of one guild and not of 

46 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 47 

rival associations. There is a regular tariff per 
day according to the size of the party, the em- 
ployer paying the guide's travelling expenses, 
but not his hotel bills. The guide combines the 
functions of guide proper, interpreter, and courier. 
He takes the railway tickets, engages the rooms, 
and bullies the rickshaw men. He accompanies 
the callow foreigner on his shopping excursions, 
the common impression being that on the one 
hand the guide prevents his charge being too 
badly pillaged, while on the other he receives 
from the shopkeeper a commission for introducing 
custom. I don't know how true the story of the 
commission is, though it sounds probable; I am 
sure it is cheaper in the end to go shopping with 
a guide. 

Matsuda was a perfect paragon of guides. To 
begin with, he was the best-dressed person in the 
party ; in the daytime attired in European style, 
sometimes with one or two changes of raiment, 
and in the evening in native, and in both styles 
looking equally v\^ell dressed, which is more than 
can be said of most Japanese. He was a good- 
looking man, probably at least thirty-five, but 
looking younger, small and slim, with beauti- 
ful hands. His face generally wore a smile, of 
welcome in the morning, of satisfaction when he 
thought our praise intelligent, of dignified depre- 
cation at questions which betrayed our foreign 



48 West and by East 

barbarism, of good-humoured bewilderment when 
his EngHsh and ours could not be reconciled. 
Not that his English was not on the whole pretty 
good, but some days it was worse than others, 
and then he became too fluent and pronounced 
wildly. 

He had begun life, as far as I can remember, 
as a Buddhist, and then had been successively a 
Shinto worshipper, a Protestant, a Roman Catho- 
lic, and when we met him was a sort of Shinto- 
Buddhist, which I fancy meant very little. Most 
of the ceremonies and beliefs which he was called 
upon to describe when we visited a temple he 
deprecated as '' ver' ol'-fashioned," but yet dis- 
played a lurking hope that we would not speak 
of them lightly. 

His many virtues and accomplishments will 
appear incidentally, so here I need not enumerate 
them further. 

The first part of our expedition was to be by 
train — to Kamakura, a journey of some fifty 
minutes. The Yokohama railway station was 
much like an English one except that there were 
no advertisements, and all directions were in 
Japanese as well as English. The officials wore 
a sort of military uniform, and everything was 
drawn to Japanese scale, the engines undersized, 
— some built in England and some in the United 
States, — the carriages small and four-wheeled 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 49 

The first-class ones are like English saloons with 
seats round three sides and a lavatory on the 
fourth, the seats divided by arms and unpleasantly 
narrow for more than a short journey. The 
third-class are like the old-fashioned English ones 
of the same class, with no divisions above the 
back of the seats. The second- and third-class 
carriages were always crowded with Japanese, 
and it was a constant source of wonder to us 
where they were all going and why. On the 
arrival of a train one is almost distracted by the 
clatter of their innumerable wooden clogs on 
the concrete platform. 

The country we passed through on this short 
journey was fairly typical of all we saw. The 
line wound among low green hills, green to the 
top, covered now with pine trees, now with azalea 
bushes. The valleys were parcelled out into 
little fields, terraced in places half-way up the 
hillside, and yellow many of them with the fast- 
ripening rice. We followed the course of the 
Tokaido, one of the ancient highways, and there- 
fore passed frequent villages, sometimes a strag- 
gling street, sometimes a handful of little low 
houses, tile-roofed or thatched, and often grow- 
ing a crop of grass on the thatch. Through the 
open house-sides we often caught glimpses of the 
internal economy, but generally a bamboo fence 
or a clump of growing bamboo prevented this. 



50 West and by East 

It is the great feathery plumes of the bamboo 
that give to this landscape its character as much 
as do the dark, straight lines of the cypress to that 
of Tuscany. 

At Kamakura we took rickshaws and were 
trundled down the straggling street which is all 
that is left of the ancient capital of Japan, to the 
temple of Hachiman, the god of war. The 
temple is set on the top of many steps rising from 
an ample courtyard in which is a magnificent 
maiden-hair tree. The building is not particu- 
larly large or magnificent, though there is a fine 
museum of old weapons and gifts from successive 
Mikados. There is a striking view from the 
temple of the road running straight from the foot 
of the steps to the sea, spanned at intervals by a 
torii. A torii is an erection of beams like a Greek 
capital n set up at the entrance to a temple or 
before shrines. It is rather a triumphal arch than 
a gateway, as there are never any gates nor, as a 
rule, any wall. They are said to have been 
originally hen-roosts, and the projecting arms 
were for the accommodation of the hens, but for 
this I do not vouch. 

Immediately behind the temple of Hachiman 
is a little hill on which is the Daibutsu, or Great 
Buddha. This is a hollow bronze image of 
Buddha, forty-two feet high, seated cross-legged 
in the usual posture. Our opinions were divided 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 51 

as to whether the expression was cruel and malig- 
nant or almost benevolent ; we agreed that it was 
calm and contemplative. It is possible to ascend 
some distance inside the figure, where there is a 
small shrine, but no longer right into the head. 
Daibutsu is now in the open air, but all around 
can still be seen the bases on which once rested 
the pillars of the enclosing temple. It was de- 
molished by a tidal wave about four hundred 
years ago. Formerly tourists used to be photo- 
graphed standing or sitting on the crossed hands 
of Buddha so as to accentuate their respective 
sizes, but this is now happily forbidden because 
the Japanese considered it irreverent — a feeling 
Matsuda evidently shared. 

The next piece of riding was rather long and 
lay through the street of a village where some 
religious festival was about to take place. At 
either end of the street a pair of long and narrow 
banners was set up, of white cloth painted with 
great black letters. They were fastened to tall 
bamboos decorated with streamers, and could be 
seen from far away over the low houses and 
waving rice-fields. The eaves on either side the 
street were festooned with round paper lanterns 
and little pieces of white paper. The whole 
village was full of children in gay festival dress, 
and the excitement culminated about half-way 
up the street, where there was a gaily decorated 



52 West and by East 

erection on wheels. It was perhaps eight feet 
square and fifteen high, and had three stories. 
The top one was occupied by a gorgeously dressed 
lay-figure and the lower two swarmed over by a 
mass of bare-legged boys playing a ceaseless, dole- 
ful tattoo on a big drum. Later in the day this 
vehicle was to be dragged in procession through 
the village. Struggling past this we reached the 
temple of Kwannon, also on the side of a hill. 
Kwannon is the goddess of mercy, and there is 
an image of her here thirty feet high. It is of 
dull gilt, but so closely shut in by the walls of 
the shrine that it is only by means of lanterns 
that it can be seen at all, and then only by sec- 
tions as the attendant raises and lowers the light 
by a rope and pulley. Perhaps it is this touch of 
mystery that makes it more impressive than the 
Great Buddha. We were again impressed in this 
temple by the great resemblance which the images 
bear in general shape and colour to those in 
Roman Catholic churches. 

Passing back through the village street with its 
swaying lanterns and fluttering banners and the 
incessant throb of the drum, a short trot brought 
us to a hotel much patronised by Europeans from 
Yokohama in the summer months, and to an ex- 
cellent lunch. Then a long trot, mostly close to 
the seashore, brought us to Eynoshima. This is 
a rocky island connected with the mainland at 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 53 

low water by a long foot-bridge. We left our 
rickshaws and walked across, to find a steep, dirty 
street lined with tea-houses and shops selling 
shell ornaments. The caves, which are the chief 
attraction, we had not time to see, and as it was 
we only just regained our rickshaws without hav- 
ing to wade. We saw some fishermen hauling in 
their nets, and the method seemed to us ingenious. 
The net was near the shore, and from either end 
a rope was carried on to the beach. Each man 
(there were some twenty, men and boys) had a 
short piece of cord with which he hitched himself 
on to the rope, facing the sea. The first man was 
quite near the water's edge, the rest at regular 
intervals behind. They then all leant their weight 
against their tackles and walked backwards. As 
each man in turn came to a certain point of the 
shore he unhitched himself and ran down to take 
his place at the bottom. By this means a steady 
pull was kept up with apparently no great exer- 
tion. We were sorry we could not wait to see 
what the net contained as a reward for all this 
hauling. 

Before starting off again we made our first ac- 
quaintance with Japanese tea at the little tea- 
house where we had left the rickshaws. We 
found it wonderfully refreshing and not unpleas- 
ant, though afterwards we had it much better. 
As a rule we stopped for tea once or twice on 



54 West and by East 

each excursion. The teapot, the little cups, or 
rather bowls, and the saucers (when there were 
any, in which case they were oval and of bronze 
or pewter) were always dainty and artistic how- 
ever poor the house. The tea was straw-coloured 
and aromatic in taste (our first specimen also 
tasted of oil), and a good deal stronger than it 
looked, but then a Japanese cupful is only about 
an English tablespoonful. There was never any 
sugar or cream, but generally some kind of small 
cake was brought, perhaps sponge cakes, or large 
peppermints or biscuits; but as a rule the cakes 
were made of bean flour and sugar pressed into 
the shape of chrysanthemums or other flowers, 
and tasting of sand and sugar. 

Half an hour's run brought us to Fujisawa 
station, a couple of stations beyond Kamakura. 
We passed several villages, dirty and dismal^ — for 
in Japan the large towns are far ahead of the vil- 
lages, especially the fishing villages, in cleanliness 
and apparent comfort. In front of most of the 
houses were mats covered with little fishes drying 
and blackening in the sun, and giving out a pun- 
gent smell. They are used as a relish for curry. 

At Fujisawa we had a little while to wait, which 
we spent in drinking tea and watching a woman 
dressing her neighbour's hair, an operation de- 
manding great skill and taking an hour every 
three days or so. 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 55 

We got back to Yokohama about a quarter to 
seven, so I had only just time to dress, jump 
into a rickshaw, — this is the ideal way to go out 
to dinner on a warm evening, — and get up to the 
Bluff by dinner-time. The house where I was 
dining was long, low, and spacious, hidden among 
its trees and gardens, but the furniture was strictly 
English, for my host said he liked to have every- 
thing about him as English as possible, that he 
might forget how far he was from home. Ex- 
cept for the servants in their Japanese dress it 
w^ould have been hard to suppose oneself ten 
thousand miles from home. I had a very delight- 
ful evening. My ride down from the Bluff after- 
wards was in fine weather, but in the night there 
came on a terrific storm of wind and rain which 
seemed as though it would sweep my room away. 
It did wash away a bridge on the main line to 
Kobe, so that railway traffic was disorganised for 
the next fortnight. There was also a slight earth- 
quake, but I missed it by being asleep. 

All Wednesday it rained pitilessly, but our 
ardour would not let us rest. So in the morning 
we did some shopping and also went to the tea- 
firing house of a large European firm to see the 
process of firing or drying. But as it was the 
slack season we saw only a little tea drying, 
the leaves spread on large, flat baskets over little 
charcoal fires. We then went into the office to 



56 West and by East 

be instructed in the mysteries of tasting by the 
compradore, or head-man, a most stately China- 
man with flowing robes and exquisite hands. He 
selected four teas of qualities differing as widely 
as possible, and from each tea brewed a tiny pot, 
and from each pot poured a little cupful. Then 
we, with a spoon, took from each cup in turn a 
mouthful, which — according to our orders — we 
merely rolled round the mouth and ejected into 
a great tin funnel placed handy. Even our un- 
trained palates could distinguish very great differ- 
ence in the flavours. Many varieties of tea were 
shown us, the most curious being the '' spider- 
leg,** in which the leaf is tightly rolled and about 
an inch long. It commands a fancy price, and is 
bought principally by the foreign men-of-war. 

From there I paddled through the rain to tiffin 
at hospitable No. i The Bund, one of the old- 
fashioned houses built when space was no object, 
and accordingly very airy and large. There were 
eight or ten at tiffin, one topic of conversation 
being the earthquake of the previous night, which 
to my chagrin I had missed. I found out then, 
what everyone I met afterwards also confessed, 
that the more earthquakes a man feels the less 
he likes them. We as newcomers looked forward 
to experiencing one at least, but the residents 
knew them too well to like them. It is impossible 
to tell just when an earthquake may occuf, just 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 57 

how violent it will be when it comes, and whether 
it will be your last, and this idea seems to get on 
the nerves. 

After tiffin I rejoined my party, and with the 
M.P. we went to see a cloisonne factory. It lay 
some distance away, at the end of a dismal ride 
through deep mud and huge puddles. We saw 
the different processes of the work: first the 
smooth copper vase, then the pattern drawn on it 
with a brush, then the pattern outlined with thin, 
flat wire set on edge, then the compartments thus 
formed filled in with different coloured enamels, 
and so on through sundry firings, polishings, and 
repetitions to the finished article. 

That night I dined at the United Club, for 
which my host of the previous night, who was its 
president, had put me up. It stands a little back 
from the road half-way along the bund, with a 
broad veranda in front where the members lie in 
long chairs and look over the beautiful harbour 
or examine the shipping through the telescope. 
It is well equipped in every way, but notably 
as to bar and billiard-room. The cooking, espe- 
cially the curry, the work of a Chinese artist, is 
excellent and absurdly cheap. The *' boys,** all 
Japanese, of course, looked picturesque in white 
duck suits with brass buttons, knickerbockers, 
red stockings, and buckle shoes. Just before I 
left Japan the white duck changed to blue cloth. 



58 West and by East 

Thursday we spent in getting to Nikko, a 
wearisome railway journey with several changes 
and tiresome waits. Matsuda, however, shone 
out in a new r61e, and so lent some brightness to 
a dull day. When he considered the right mo- 
ment was come he appeared from the second-class 
carriage where he travelled with a tiffin basket — 
his own, with '* Matsuda *' on all the crockery, 
and many ingenious devices to save space. From 
this he produced paper napkins and all other re- 
quisite implements, and then an excellent cold 
tiffin of several courses, washed down with claret 
and mineral water. He served the meal with the 
skill of a corps of trained servants, repacked his 
traps, and effaced himself. 

At every station of importance venders of tea 
and edibles paraded the platforms, crying their 
wares in lugubrious sing-song tones. The edibles, 
in neat wooden boxes, were freely bought by the 
Japanese passengers, and as some of them looked 
like tempting cakes I bought a box. But I was 
grievously disappointed, for what looked like 
sections of jam-roll in the uncertain light of the 
station lamps turned out to be clammy prepara- 
tions of rice and fish, scarcely, if at all, cooked. 
However, Matsuda was not too proud to take 
them — out of the carriage at all events. These 
boxes of food are a great institution on Japanese 
railways, and are all on one pattern. They are 



Kamakura and Eynoshima 59 

oblong boxes, perhaps 9 inches by 6 inches and 
I J inches deep, of thin wood, smoothed but not 
painted, and lightly glued together. The lid, 
merely a flat piece of wood, is kept on by a wisp 
of straw string tied round the box. The interior 
is divided into compartments to keep the rice and 
fish and vegetables — or whatever the different 
kinds of food may be — separate. Under the 
string is generally slipped a paper napkin and a 
pair of chop-sticks. Sometimes the chop-sticks 
are made of one piece of plain white wood split 
but not completely severed. The buyer when he 
breaks the sticks apart can thus be sure that they 
have never been used before. Add that from be- 
tween the chop-sticks so separated generally falls a 
wooden toothpick, and it will be seen that every 
contingency is provided for; at a cost so small 
that the whole apparatus is thrown away when 
once used, with the result that the railway em- 
bankments are littered everywhere with little 
white boxes. 

When it was not raining it was threatening to 
rain, so that the views were moist and monoton- 
ous. The principal thing of interest was the fine 
river which we crossed, the Tonegawa, broader 
than normal because of the heavy rains. 

It was dark when we reached Nikko, and as we 
were trundled up the long straggling street, on 
each side huge cryptomeria loomed ghostlike 



6o West and by East 

out of the darkness, and through open doors we 
caught occasional glimpses of families lying round 
their braziers or in the circle of light cast by a 
hanging American lamp. The road ended with 
a sudden very steep, but short, hill, and our 
panting coolies set us down at the door of the 
Kanaya Hotel. 



CHAPTER VI 

NIKKO 

THE hotel is kept by a Japanese, but is run on 
European lines, and is clean and airy, the 
rooms large, and opening on to broad verandas. 
Being set on a hill it commands a fine view of the 
brawling stream at the bottom of the valley and of 
the opposite hill where the great mausolea lie hid- 
den among tall cryptomeria. These giant conifers 
grow to an enormous size about Nikko, forming 
excellent backgrounds for the brightly coloured 
temples, and lining the great post road with a 
superb avenue. 

In the morning we set out to see the sights, 
crossing the river by a plain wooden bridge. Just 
above this bridge is another very graceful one of 
dull red paint or lacquer. But this is sacred to 
the feet of gods alone, and though the Mikado — 
himself a god upon earth — was on one occasion 
asked by the priests to cross it, he modestly 
refused and thus earned himself a glorious 
name. This is a story of Matsuda's. Mat- 
suda would not give any direct answers to our 
questions about the Mikado and how he was 

6i 



62 West and by East 

regarded by the bulk of the people. The only- 
thing he would say was that once at a review 
the Mikado noticed a soldier limping, and on 
inquiry found it was due to bad boots; he de- 
manded to see a pair of military boots, at once 
condemned them, and ordered a new kind to be 
provided. *' Oh, yes, he is ver' good," Matsuda 
concluded. 

Above the bridges the river runs between hills 
which on one side come down steep and wooded 
to the water's edge and on the other leave room 
for a strip of cultivated land, a few houses, and 
a broad, well-kept road. The red bridge in the 
foreground completes a beautiful picture. The 
road, by the way, is equipped with telegraph 
poles and wires and a narrow-gauge tramway, by 
which the copper is brought from the mines 
higher up the valley. 

Across the road a broad ascent, half path and 
half a flight of very shallow steps winding between 
great cryptomeria, brought us to the first of the 
temples, the Sambutsu-do, or Hall of the Three 
Buddhas. 

Nikko is the Mecca of Japan, and the whole 
hillside is a sacred enclosure, in which, besides 
the two great mausolea, — of leyasu and lemitsu, 
— there are several smaller temples and a great 
number of subordinate buildings. 

All this enclosure is laid out as a park, and 



Nikko 63 

forms a very beautiful setting for the famous 
shrines. Long, straight gravel walks lead up to 
the principal buildings, and are in some cases 
very broad, with a stream of clear water flowing 
down a paved channel in the middle. On either 
side are walls of ancient lichen-spotted stone to 
about the height of a man, topped by red wooden 
palings, whose colour has been brought by sun 
and rain into harmony with the grey stones and 
the great green trees behind. The charm of 
Nikko lies in this combination of rather sombre 
natural beauties and a gay, almost gaudy, arch- 
itecture, and in the quietness and dignity brood- 
ing over all. 

The first temple we came to, that of the Three 
Buddhas, is not particularly interesting, because 
quite modern. It owes its origin to the revolu- 
tion of 1868. Prior to that time the indigenous 
Shinto religion and the exotic Buddhism had be- 
come closely interwoven, so that many symbols 
and images peculiar to Buddhism had appeared in 
Shinto temples. But at the revolution, or re- 
storation, pure Shintoism became the established 
religion of the awakened monarchy, and to obtain 
this purity all the Shinto temples were purged of 
anything savouring of Buddhism. It was to 
shelter three Buddhas thus rendered homeless 
that this temple of Sambutsu was erected. 

From here we had a little distance to walk to 



64 West and by East 

the mausoleum of lemitsu, stopping occasionally 
(or, as it seemed to the rest of us, often) to let 
Mr. Montreal snap a view which struck him as 
likely to make a good lantern-slide. 

I have neither the intention nor the power to 
describe these mausolea in detail. That has 
been often done, but can never be done ade- 
quately. Nor have I any fresh facts to offer as 
to leyasu and lemitsu. leyasu, the founder of 
the great Tokugawa line of Shoguns, died in 
1616, and his son erected at Nikko — already 
famous for its monastery — this memorial chapel 
and tomb. lemitsu was his grandson, also a 
Shogun, who died in 165 1. To him, too, a 
magnificent chapel and tomb were built. lem- 
itsu's chapel is Buddhist; that in memory of 
leyasu is Shinto. 

With the view of keeping the best to the end 
we went to the temple of lemitsu first. Outside 
its outer gate are rows of stalls where the faithful 
may buy tiny wooden idols as souvenirs of their 
pilgrimage to Nikko. Within this gate we turned 
sharp to the left and climbed a broad flight of 
steps leading, with many turns and twists, up a 
wooded hill. The steps and balustrades are all 
of grey lichen-spotted stone. The latter are 
massive, with uprights, bases, and copings, all of 
hewn stone and all about seven inches square, 
but at first sight not remarkable. But Matsuda 



Nikko 65 

pointed out that the balustrade is made in lengths 
of four or five feet — simply great solid blocks hewn 
and pierced to resemble masonry. This was done 
by the Shogun building the shrine with the de- 
liberate intention of impoverishing the daimios 
who were contributing the balustrades. The 
Shogun was an overgrown commander-in-chief 
who had managed to perpetuate his dynasty, and 
the daimios his armed retainers, who grew into a 
turbulent nobility, ready, if allowed any power, 
each to play the Shogun in his own sphere. 

These great temples at Nikko are distinguished 
rather by their ornaments than their architecture. 
In general plan they are similar to the ordinary 
type of temple. This consists mainly of an ob- 
long building with a high pitched roof often 
supported by one or two rows of columns. The 
whole of one long side is generally open or 
closed only with movable blinds. On the oppos- 
ite side a smaller building projects at right angles. 
This smaller building contains the shrine or the 
image, while the larger one is for the worshipper. 
The temple stands in a courtyard bounded by a 
high wall or a sort of cloister, and is approached 
by a short flight of steps. The gate in this wall 
is placed opposite the main entrance of the 
temple and is sometimes connected with it 
by a covered way. Sometimes there is another 
outer courtyard and another gate. These gates 



66 West and by East 

are always tall and imposing erections. There 
are, as a rule, numerous subordinate buildings 
grouped round the main buildings, especially 
if there is a monastery attached to the tem- 
ple. 

The exterior of the temple may be compara- 
tively plain, but a wealth of ornament is lav- 
ished on the interior and on the great entrance 
gate and the courtyard wall. Only the found- 
ations, as a rule, are stone, while the buildings 
themselves are of wood lacquered in various 
colours, with gilded metal clamps and bolts. The 
roofs and their enormous flaring eaves are covered 
with fluted tiles. The wall of the courtyard also 
has a similar broad-eaved roof to keep the weather 
from its elaborately carved panels. 

The courtyard wall of the temple of lemitsu is 
comparatively plain. It has lattice-work panels 
in the middle and only a narrow band of carved 
work at the top and bottom. Passing through 
the gate we came to the steps of the temple itself. 
Here we had to take off our boots. This is gen- 
erally necessary, the alternative being to put a 
sort of bag of cloth over boots and all. It is 
rather a nuisance, but even if it were not the rule, 
I think one would be disposed to do it of one's 
own accord. The floors of the temple and the 
steps are all of polished lacquer, though occasion- 
ally matted, and one feels as if one had by some 



Nikko 67 

Alice-in-Wonderland process shrunk to a size fit 
to enter a Japanese cabinet. 

The interior is most beautiful. The decora- 
tion, though daring and elaborate, is all in good 
taste, evidently good of its kind, and moreover 
toned by time into harmony. The flat ceiling 
is supported all round by columns. On three 
sides the spaces between the pillars are filled with 
lattice screens which can easily be opened and 
on one side always are open. On the fourth side, 
in which is the entrance to the shrine, these spaces 
are closed by wooden screens lacquered with huge 
lions on a dull gold background. The pillars, too, 
are a dull gold ; above them runs a broad frieze of 
gold set with panels of flowers and birds carved in 
high relief and painted in the natural colours. The 
ceiling is panelled, the beams black and gold, the 
panels blue with gold dragons. The little furni- 
ture there is consists principally of a row of small 
tables, each supporting a large box containing the 
priests' service-books. These, too, are lacquer. 
From the description this may seem gaudy, in 
reality it was not so ; the gold was dull so as 
to produce the effect of subdued sunshine; also, 
the room was large and well proportioned, and 
there was very little in it to interfere with the 
harmony of walls and ceiling. I can give no idea of 
the wealth and perfection of detail, which is per- 
haps almost more noticeable on the plain exterior. 



68 West and by East 

There the brass fastenings were almost the only 
ornament, but these were all in graceful shapes 
and all engraved with some tasteful pattern. 

By the ordinary tourist a Japanese temple is a 
sight which can be soon seen, though the student 
of Japanese art may require weeks. On this oc- 
casion we were ordinary tourists, for we did not 
linger very long at leyasu's temple, but, if I must 
tell the truth, went back to tiffin. 

In the afternoon we crossed the river and went 
a little way up the valley, and then recrossed to 
the Hundred Buddhas. We had tea in a summer- 
house overlooking the turbulent stream opposite a 
large, smooth rock rising sheer from the water, on 
which the eyes of the faithful can read mira- 
culous writing. This tea was another triumph for 
Matsuda. 

There is a superstition that no two people can 
count the row of Buddhas alike. Miss Brantford 
and I tried, and in the first portion one of us 
counted twenty-seven, the other twenty-eight, 
nor could several attempts make any difference. 
We felt quite pleased with our success. The 
images are each about five feet high as they sit, 
about a yard apart, and very much alike. More- 
over, the path between them and the river bank 
was full of large puddles, needing a great deal of 
attention, a consideration which, I think, may 
account for the discrepancy. 



Nikko 69 

All this day the weather was threatening, but 
on Saturday it was fine, an opportunity Mr. 
Montreal and I determined to seize to ride up 
some eight miles and twenty-three hundred feet 
to Chuzenji, and if possible a further eight miles 
and seven hundred feet to Yumoto. As Nikko it- 
self stands two thousand feet above sea level this 
would bring us by easy stages to five thousand feet. 

There were four possible methods of progres- 
sion open to us: to walk, but for this we were 
disinclined ; to be dragged in rickshaws, but we 
were too heavy to make this pleasant for ourselves 
or the coolies; to be carried in a kago. Now a 
kago is a small, square seat suspended from a big 
bamboo carried on coolies' shoulders. The occu- 
pant must sit in a very cramped position, which 
only a Japanese can do for any length of time, 
even if the kagos were not all made to Japanese 
measure. The fourth method, to ride, was left 
us, and early in the morning two small, rough 
ponies made their appearance. They were not 
beautiful to look at, but we found them very 
willing to go, though their trot was too short to 
be comfortable. With each pony was a coolie, 
one a mere boy. They trotted along beside us 
all day, apparently quite happy, though carrying 
the lunch-basket and camera for at least half the 
distance. 

Our way lay up the valley for a little and then 



70 West and by East 

turned sharp to the right along the side of a 
tributary stream. The path rose rapidly and its 
quality as rapidly declined. We stopped at a 
tea-house to breathe the men and horses, and 
after this the climb really began. The hills on 
each side were steeper and higher, in some places 
coming sheer down into the stream, so that the 
path had to be carried on a flimsy-looking scaf- 
folding covered with sticks and earth hanging 
over the river. Crossing the river the road ran 
in zigzags up through a wood of fine chestnuts, 
beeches, and maples, in some cases turning crim- 
son or scarlet. We had left the pines below us. 
The glimpses between the trees down into the 
valley were magnificent. The hills on both sides 
were thickly wooded to the tops except where 
just opposite us a great cliff stood out too abrupt 
for any tree to find root-hold. It struck me as re- 
sembling but glorifying the pass of Killiecrankie. 
The path continued steep till we were quite close 
to Chuzenji, where we turned aside to see the 
fine waterfall by which the river leaves the lake. 
Then a short ride on the flat brought us to the 
village. 

Chuzenji is for a few days in the year thronged 
with pilgrims, but for the rest presents a deserted 
appearance, as most of the houses lining its one 
broad street are closed except when required 
for pilgrims' lodgings. We went by Matsuda's 



Nikko 71 

instructions — for he himself had stayed with the 
ladies at Nikko — to a new hotel kept by a Japan- 
ese, but to some extent European in its furniture. 
We lunched in a broad veranda on the upper 
story carpeted with clean matting, ceiled and 
walled with wood smoothed but unvarnished. 
The sliding paper shutters were open, and we 
looked right down into the water. On either 
hand stretched the quaint wooden houses of the 
village set on substantial stone foundations which 
rose straight out of the lake. Before us lay the 
beautiful lake, about two miles across, backed by 
lofty green hills. There were magnificent clouds 
about, whose shadows a bright sun cast on the 
hills and the quiet lake, where one or two boats 
were fishing. The salmon-trout, fresh from the 
lake and excellently cooked, was good, the cold 
meats and things with which the thoughtful 
Matsuda had supplied us were good, and so was 
the appetite we had acquired riding. Altogether 
there was every reason for enjoying and remem- 
bering a delightful meal. But we could not 
linger long, for we decided to try and get up to 
Yumoto and back if possible the same night; 
usually people, if not in a hurry, spend one night 
at Chuzenji or Yumoto. 

For some time the road wound along the edge 
of the lake through woods where we saw hydran- 
geas six and seven feet high covered with their 



72 West and by Hast 

blue flowers. Then we climbed up through the 
woods to a broad grassy plateau studded with 
occasional trees. Whereas at Nikko the maples 
were only just turning colour, up here the colours 
were magnificent, whole trees glowing bright 
scarlet or crimson in every leaf. Then these few 
trees ceased, and there was nothing to be seen 
but tall grass and a German steamer acquaintance 
whom we overtook in a rickshaw with three 
coolies and his guide behind in another, and 
whom we accordingly rallied on his luxurious 
habits. On the other side of this plateau were 
more woods and a couple more waterfalls, very 
pretty but not tremendous, which our coolies 
compelled us to visit, and then the lake and 
village of Yumoto. The lake is a great deal 
smaller than that of Chuzenji, and the village, 
which is famous for its hot sulphur springs, con- 
sists almost entirely of inns and bath-houses. 
These latter are very primitive, — simply large 
swimming - baths roofed over and enclosed on 
three sides, but left open towards the road, so 
that the bathers — men, women, and children — are 
in full view of the public. But then the Japanese 
idea of decency is radically different from ours, 
and this state of things is to them by no means 
strange, though it appeared doubly so to us be- 
cause of the veneer of Western civilisation so 
many of them now assume. 



Nikko I7y 

We went up to the actual spring where the 
water comes up very hot, and found half a dozen 
men in a small tank lying soaking with just their 
heads and toes visible. This they will do once 
or twice a day for two or three hours at a stretch. 
The Japanese are much troubled with diseases of 
the skin, and hence their affection for these hot 
sulphur baths. 

We could not stay long at Yumoto but hurried 
back to Chuzenji, leading our ponies down some 
pretty steep places by way of short cuts. At 
Chuzenji we picked up the lunch-baskets, and 
gave the coolies some saki. I don*t know 
whether they were really tired, but they looked 
so, and gladly accepted any refreshment. At- 
tendance on horses seems thirsty work in any 
climate. Soon after we left Chuzenji darkness 
fell on us, and then rain. One of the coolies 
borrowed a large paper lantern to light the way 
and two large paper umbrellas to keep us dry. 
The road was very rough and muddy, cut through 
thick woods with many awkward corners, and we 
also remembered the flimsy scaffoldings we had 
crossed in the morning, so for an hour or so we 
preferred to walk. It was a queer-looking pro- 
cession, — the two rough ponies, each led by a 
coolie in tightly fitting garments, we two foreign- 
ers with our big umbrellas, now for the first time 
found to be more than mere ornaments, and the 



74 West and by East 

lantern swaying in the leading cooly's hand and 
casting weird shadows on rocks and trees. 

When we mounted at the bottom of the steep 
part I was riding last, and the light held by Mr. 
Montreal's coolie showed me a queer figure strid- 
ing before me. All I could see was a great 
umbrella, then the trailing skirts of an overcoat, 
and beneath the pony's hind legs and tail, so 
that it seemed as if some monstrous beast of the 
centaur tribe were stalking ahead of me. But 
even with such company the road seemed end- 
less, though it was only eight o'clock when we 
reached the hotel. As we were neither of us in 
good riding condition, the seven hours we had 
been in the saddle made us feel pretty stiff, but a 
Japanese hot bath soon corrected that and made 
us very ready for our dinner and to recommend 
the expedition to a large party of Empress friends 
who arrived at the hotel that night. 

The next day was by the calendar Sunday, the 
3d, but there was, of course, nothing to indicate 
the fact, which impressed me considerably, — 
though quite unreasonably, — as it was the first 
Sunday I had ever spent in a non-Christian coun- 
try. To say nothing indicates the fact is, by the 
way, inaccurate, as the schools are closed on 
Sunday to give the children one day's holiday in 
the week. 

In the morning we went some four or five miles 



Nikko 75 

to a Httle tea-house set on top of a hill near Kiri- 
furi-no-taki, or the Mist Falling Cascade. The 
ladies went in carrying chairs, and Mr. Montreal, 
Matsuda, and I rode. Matsuda showed himself 
a great horseman in his way, which meant prin- 
cipally going at a fast trot or canter wherever the 
road could by any means allow of it. The path 
in places seemed quite impossible for horses, but 
the little Jap ponies took us safely up flights of 
rocky steps and through mud over their knees. 
From the tea-house hill we had a beautiful view of 
the circle of larger hills in which it lay, steep- 
sided green hills dotted with low, green azalea 
bushes. 

In the afternoon Mr. Montreal and I went to 
see the other great temple, that of leyasu, which 
the ladies had seen the day before while we were 
at Chuzenji. This is a Shinto temple, but other- 
wise very similar to the temple of lemitsu, though 
larger, more elaborate, and even more beautiful. 
At its entrance stands a pagoda — one of the few 
in Japan. It is square and five-storied, one hund- 
red feet high. Among the subordinate buildings 
we passed on the way to the temple was the 
stable of the sacred pony. We did not see the 
animal, but believe it to be white. His stable is 
interesting because of the three monkeys carved 
over the doors. One is covering his eyes with 
his hands, another his ears, and the third his 



76 West and by East 

mouth, and they are called the blind, deaf, and 
dumb monkeys who respectively see no evil, hear 
no evil, and speak no evil. They are a very 
favourite subject in Japanese art, appearing again 
and again in wood, ivory, or bronze. In an- 
other building with wide-open doors was seated 
an elderly and preternaturally solemn priestess. 
When we threw a small coin on to the mat in 
front of her she rose and performed what was 
called a dance, but it seems too frivolous a name 
for tTie ceremony. With long, flowing robes and 
a towering head-dress she solemnly revolved, ad- 
vanced, retreated, bowed, marking the time with 
a fan in one hand and a cluster of little bells in 
the other. In time she stopped and resumed her 
seat as noiselessly and automatically as she had 
begun. The whole dance, which is some kind of 
a sacred function, reminded me strongly of the 
penny-in-the-slot toys of seaside places — to com- 
pare great things with small. 

The chief glory of this temple is the entrance 
gate and wall of the great courtyard. The gate 
is two storied with flaring tile roof. It is a mass 
of fantastic carving and gorgeous colouring, per- 
haps too gorgeous and fantastic, but on the whole 
beautiful. So beautiful was it considered that it 
was thought wise that one of the dozen pillars on 
which it stands should be placed upside down. 
So in this pillar the points of the diaper orna- 



Nikko n 

mentation point down instead of up, and though 
the difference would escape anyone whose atten- 
tion was not particularly called to it, it is enough 
to avert the wrath the gods might have evinced 
against a perfect building. On each side of this 
gate on a stone foundation is the matchless 
wooden wall. It is topped by broad tiled eaves, 
and is a miracle of carving and carpentry. There 
are two rows of panels, large and small, the larger 
ones above. They are filled with groups of birds 
and flowers, the lower ones confined to water 
birds. The carving is in full relief, though, as 
we afterwards found, this effect is helped by 
judicious piecing as regards some of the most 
prominent parts. The carving is all coloured 
proper, and no two panels are quite alike, and 
each is worth studying separately. 

In almost startling contrast to this magnificence 
IS the actual tomb. As in the case of the tomb 
of lemitsu and also of some of the tombs at 
Tokio, leyasu's tomb is a little behind the temple 
and in the open. It is surrounded by a simple 
stone balustrade, and before it on a low stone 
table are a great bronze stork, a bronze incense 
burner, and a bronze vase full of artificial lotus 
flowers and leaves. The tomb is a great bell- 
shaped bronze casting with a spreading square 
top shaped like a pagoda roof, and stands on half 
a dozen stone steps, so that the whole structure 



78 West and by East 

may be some fifteen feet high. It is almost in- 
nocent of ornament, and most dignified. 

After seeing the temple we climbed innumer- 
able flights of grey stone steps, still among giant 
cryptomeria, to some minor temples and shrines 
at the top of the hill. A priest in flowing yellow 
robes climbing in front of us lent a final touch of 
colour to the scene. 

Monday morning we devoted to seeing another 
waterfall, the Urami-ga-taki, or Back View Cas- 
cade, so called because there is a path right behind 
and under it. In the afternoon we did some 
shopping. Shopping may be taken as forming a 
running accompaniment to all our other doings, 
and did not necessarily involve much, or any, 
buying. In the evening we had an earthquake, 
not violent but rather long. As it was our first 
we remarked, '* This is an earthquake," and sat 
listening to the rattle of the shutters and watching 
the furniture quake. Probably our one hundredth 
would not have found us so calm. 

On Tuesday we left for Tokio. We had 
thought of going by rickshaw down the Nikko 
Kaido, a twenty-mile avenue of cryptomeria, to 
Utsunomiya, and joining the train there ; but the 
rain fell in torrents, and we had to give up this 
plan and go all the way by rail. It rained all 
day, and was raining when we reached Tokio 
after dark. Tokio is a city of magnificent 



Nikko 79 

distances, and as we rode to the Imperial Hotel 
through endless broad streets we saw others 
stretching away interminably in all directions, 
their countless lights reflected in innumerable 
puddles. 



CHAPTER VII 

TOKIO 

THE Imperial Hotel is a most imposing build- 
ing (for Japan), stucco, with a mansard 
roof. Originally, I believe, opened and run by a 
Frenchman, it retains distinct traces of France in 
its furniture. Now it is run by a Japanese, and 
is not quite so good as its exterior seems to 
promise. The rooms and corridors are big and 
bare, and some of the walls scarred with great 
earthquake cracks. 

Sightseeing in Tokio is no mere pleasure ex- 
cursion, as we found on Wednesday when we 
began upon it. The points of interest all seem to 
lie towards the circumference of the great city, 
and it is easy to waste several hours a day in just 
getting about. 

It is a very extraordinary city. To begin with, 
it has some million and a half inhabitants, and is 
popularly supposed to measure ten miles in either 
direction. On the native Japanese civilisation 
has been forcibly engrafted the exotic system of 
the West. At one moment you would say that 
the two civilisations were flourishing side by side, 

80 



Tokio 8 1 

and the next it would appear that the new ideas 
were about to replace altogether the ancient. In 
the government quarter most of the buildings are 
of brick and stucco, in a debased European style. 
There are, for instance, large brick government 
ofifices, and stucco mansions with mansard roofs 
where great nobles live, and one where the Nobles' 
Club is housed, which last, by the way, was suf- 
fering severely from the effects of earthquake 
when I was in Tokio. These buildings stand 
gaunt and bare in the midst of great areas of 
waste land intersected by straight, immensely 
broad, new roads. In other quarters of the town 
the principal sign of change is the breadth of the 
main streets. The surface is still lumpy from the 
disturbances necessary to lay a new system of 
water pipes. Down the centre run little ram- 
shackle tram-cars drawn by miserable horses, and 
on either side stand posts carrying innumerable 
telegraph and telephone wires. But the houses 
themselves, on either side, are still of native arch- 
itecture with very few exceptions. The costume 
of the people remains in all essentials Japanese. 
This is invariably the case with the women one 
sees in the streets, for the few ladies who wear 
European dress are of the higher ranks, who 
are very rarely seen in public. Postmen, sol- 
diers, and officials generally wear a European- 
looking uniform, and merchants and others whose 



82 West and by East 

business brings them into constant contact with 
Europeans also wear ** foreign " clothes or some 
modification of them. But this leaves the great 
mass of the people untouched, except often in 
the way of head- and foot-coverings, the points in 
which Japanese costume is least satisfactory. I 
believe the years since the Chinese war have 
witnessed a decided reaction in favour of things 
Japanese, by enlarging the nation's idea of its 
own importance, so that it no longer feels inclined 
to imitate so freely; for instance, the latest coin- 
age has no English words or writing on it, as had 
all the recent coins before it. 

Gas is generally used to light the streets, but 
there is a good deal of electric light in the larger 
buildings, and a hanging American lamp often 
finds great favour in private houses. In fact, 
such a lamp and a cheap American clock seem 
the ** foreign*' furniture principally favoured by 
the bulk of the people. 

One characteristic of Tokio is the triple ring of 
moats or canals flowing through the city. The 
two outer rings are bridged at frequent intervals 
and the ramparts behind them cut by public 
thoroughfares; but within the innermost is the 
Emperor's Palace, where formerly stood the Sho- 
gun's, and into this charmed circle few may pene- 
trate. The moats are broad and well filled, and 
on the inner side rise tall ramparts of great poly- 



Tokio 83 

gonal stones, often capped with drooping trees. 
That the city is built on several hills and distinctly 
steep ones is soon apparent to anyone riding any 
distance in a rickshaw, and if the rider does not 
himself notice it, the coolie takes measures to 
bring the fact before him. 

Another characteristic of the streets, as com- 
pared with those of other Japanese cities, is the 
number of soldiers about. They are small, rather 
slovenly, and are dressed in blue tunic, red trous- 
ers, and a kepi, with a star on their collar like that 
worn in the Italian army. They may be seen 
marching in bodies to and from barracks or 
wandering singly round the streets; so much so 
that it looks as though the Japanese aimed at 
founding a military monarchy of the modern 
European type. 

We spent the morning in Shiba Park, where 
six Shoguns are buried. The tombs themselves 
are very plain and dignified, of bronze or stone. 
They are in the open and of a similar shape to 
those at Nikko. There is one exception, the 
tomb of the second Shogun, which is an immense 
cylinder of gold lacquer encrusted with enamels 
and crystals, standing in a small octagonal hall. 
In connection with the tombs are three mortuary 
temples. They resemble the Nikko temples in 
general plan and in the general features of decora- 
tion. But externally at least they are not so 



84 West and by East 

brilliant. This is partly because they are covered 
with black boards to preserve them from the 
weather. But where no boards have been put 
up — as in the case of the carved work of the 
courtyard wall — no attempt seems to have been 
made to repair the ravages of time and wind and 
rain. The colouring has vanished from the flowers 
and birds, and in many cases a tail or wing has 
come off, revealing the fact that the panel was a 
marvel of carpentry no less than of carving. I 
believe the reason is that these temples belong to 
the Shogun who was deposed in 1868, and who is 
still alive. He himself either will not or cannot 
keep them in repair, and he will not allow anyone 
else to do it for him. But, even as it is, the 
carvings are exquisite, and the sobriety of tone is 
perhaps an added beauty, for the Nikko temples 
certainly come rather near to garishness. This 
at least is where a captious critic would attack 
them. But if the exteriors are solemn, the in- 
teriors are magnificent. The decoration is prin- 
cipally in lacquer of different sorts and colours 
— gold, and black, and red, and red gold-pow- 
dered. The effect is gorgeous and beautiful at the 
first glance, but only after a while does the full 
meaning of it all dawn on the foreigner so that 
he realises the endless patience necessary for the 
comparatively simple result and the almost price- 
less value that the shrines represent. 



Tokio 85 

We had just had tiffin at the hotel when a 
Japanese friend of mine came to call. He had 
been at Balliol with me, where he had lived and 
behaved in every way as an Englishman. It had 
struck me therefore as rather interesting that in 
the letter of welcome he had kindly written me 
he had excused himself from offering to put me 
up because he lived in ** pure native style.** But 
when he called on me he was in European dress, 
even though he seemed to have lost some of the 
extreme neatness for which at Oxford he was 
noticeable. He belonged to one of the great 
noble families, and his uncle had been at Balliol 
before him. I found him now a husband and 
father and a baron. (A baron indeed he had been 
at Balliol, but had not used the title, ** as we were 
all students together.'*) Not only so, but he was 
an elective member of the House of Peers. The 
two highest orders of nobility, the princes and 
the marquises, sit by right in the upper house, 
but of the counts, viscounts, and barons, a certain 
number — about one fifth of the whole — is elected 
to sit for seven years. 

This call resulted in my accepting his invita- 
tion to tiffin for the next day. 

On his departure we sallied forth, and after wast- 
ing some time in fruitless discussion with curio 
dealers found ourselves at the Meiji-za, where we 
had engaged seats by telephone. This is one of the 



86 West and by East 

leading theatres in Tokio, but although quite new 
and equipped with electric light and telephone all 
its main features are purely Japanese. The audi- 
torium was nearly square, with a flat ceiling. 
The proscenium opening, long, low, and oblong, 
occupied almost one entire side. Round the 
other three sides was a gallery. The floor was 
flat in the centre, rising a little under the gal- 
leries. It was innocent of seats, but covered 
with cushions and cut up by very low wooden 
divisions into square boxes capable of holding 
three Japanese, or four at a pinch. Narrow 
gangways crossed the floor at intervals to enable 
people to reach their seats, but the boxes under 
the gallery could be entered direct from the ex- 
ternal corridor. A few chairs were kept in odd 
corners for any wandering Europeans, and on 
these we were installed in a corner under the gal- 
lery. Just before us ran a broad gangway three 
or four feet from the floor — that is, just above the 
ordinary line of sight of the audience — stretching 
from the stage to the back of the theatre. This 
represented a road, and was therefore useful for 
processions or entrances from the distant country. 
Sometimes the actor paused half-way on this 
road to soliloquise, while all the audience turned 
to face him. At one side of the stage an orches- 
tra was concealed which kept up a continuous 
maddening drumming and twanging. On the 



Tokio 87 

opposite side in a kind of balcony sat two men, 
one of whom played a sort of guitar while the 
other sang the thoughts which were supposed to 
crowd through the mind of the actor as he paced 
the stage alone at some critical situation. This 
singing was also rather tiring. It was all recita- 
tive without any melody, sung with tremendous 
tremolo and often falsetto. 

As soon as we were seated, Matsuda provided 
us with tea and cake. One play occupies the 
whole of a day, and therefore arrangements are 
made with a neighbouring tea-house by which 
any and all meals can be served not only in the 
theatre but in one's own box. A Japanese will 
accordingly send or take his wife and family to the 
theatre in the morning, and there they will remain 
all day. In the evening a bill is presented — so 
much for seats, so much for programmes, so 
much for food, so much for tea, and so much for 
fire, that is, live coals in a brazier supplied for the 
use of smokers. Both men and women smoke, 
and smoke continuously. This bill is — at this 
particular theatre at any rate — large enough to 
make the day's entertainment of the nature of 
a luxury. 

The audience was mainly composed of women, 
apparently of the upper classes, and children with 
gay clothes and the most demure and perfect 
manners. There was much calling and returning 



88 West and by East 

of calls from box to box, and we were greatly- 
taken with the pretty little ways of the small 
ladies. There were profuse bows and smiles, a 
little talk, a little tea, perhaps a little pipe, more 
bows and smiles, and then the visitor departed ; 
sometimes, if very tiny, with the judicious assist- 
ance of the theatre attendants. 

We had come specially to Meiji-za to see 
Danjeiro act. Danjeiro is rather a dynastic than 
a personal name, and the name and prestige de- 
scend from theatrical generation to generation, 
so that Danjeiro is always among the first, if not 
the first, of Japanese actors. Unhappily for us, 
we had come too late to see his early appearance, 
and though we stayed as long as possible he did 
not come on again before we left. But even 
without Danjeiro we enjoyed the play. The 
actors were all male, as men and women do not 
act together in Japan, but the female parts were 
very creditably filled considering. The scenery 
was effective and pretty, though there was no at- 
tempt at landscapes and no painted scenes. It 
was all carpenter's work, house-fronts, interiors, 
etc., the upper part of the back of the stage being 
filled in with hanging drapery. The whole stage 
was arranged so as to revolve. Therefore while 
one scene was in progress in front another was 
being set behind, and at the proper moment the 
whole affair revolved, carrying off the old scene 



Tokio 89 

(and sometimes the actors as well), and revealing 
a fresh one. Often the stage hands had to crawl 
in to give some finishing touch. They wore black 
hoods and cloaks and, I believe, are considered 
invisible. 

Though Matsuda supplied a running explana- 
tion of the play, I cannot say much as to its 
story. The scene was laid in old Japan — i, e.^ 
Japan before 1868 — and the actors wore old- 
fashioned clothes and coiffures. In one scene, 
representing an entertainment before a daimio, 
an extraordinary figure appeared, dressed in 
white, with a thick mass of bright-red hair falling 
right to the ground. This figure danced, and 
when by great exertion it succeeded in jerking 
this mass of hair from back to front and then 
again to back, the delight of the audience was 
unbounded. In another scene the daimio arrives 
at home with a gaily equipped train of followers. 
Among them is a servant whose duty it is to 
carry a heavy ornamental spear. This drudgery 
is distasteful to him, and at night he breaks into 
the armoury, hews the spear in two, and flies. 
His wife and daughter following in search of him 
take situations as waitresses in a saki shop. To 
this shop the husband comes one day with some 
boon companions, and a very animated scene fol- 
lows as bottle after bottle of saki is consumed. 
The daughter suddenly recognises her father, 



90 West and by East 

and in her surprise drops the tray she carries, 
and brings down on herself the anger of the 
manageress. 

When the man leaves the shop, a good deal the 
worse for saki, his womankind follow him, and an 
interview takes place, evidently of an affecting 
nature. Not only did the actors weep, but the 
audience which had followed the play carefully, 
taking up all the jokes, was now dissolved in 
tears. There was hardly a woman in the theatre 
but had her handkerchief to her eyes, and the 
house was full of the sound of weeping. After 
this I forget the drift of the story — perhaps that 
was where we left. The curtain does not fall ; 
it is drawn across from one side to the other by a 
man running, holding the end. Some of these 
curtains are decorated in fine, bold designs, and 
are presents to a favourite actor, and so go on 
tour with him from place to place. 

We thought the acting was excellent, and, 
though of course understanding not a word, could 
generally make out what was happening — at least 
with Matsuda's help. 

The hotel this evening was quite lively: the 
billiard-room was full of middies from a British 
man-of-war, and they were not noiseless ; a South 
American Consulate had its headquarters in the 
hotel, and the ladies of the Consul's family and 
their friends filled the rooms with gaiety ; in an- 



Tokio 91 

other room a Japanese conjuror performed some 
tricks, which were preceded by endless attitudes 
and swaggering, accompanied by an intolerable 
twanging and drumming from behind a curtain, 
and fell rather flat in the end. 

On Thursday morning we commenced with 
the tombs of the forty-seven Ronins. These are 
heroes of Japanese legend, famous because of 
their fidelity to their dead leader and the venge- 
ance they finally took on his murderer. They 
all lie in a little shady graveyard, each with a 
small tombstone. As a matter of fact, there are 
forty-eight such tombstones, and this we pointed 
out to Matsuda. He was astonished, but could 
give no expFanation, nor can I offer one. 

From here a long trot took us to Ueno Park, 
celebrated for its cherry-blossoms in the spring, 
and for the fine view of the city it commands all 
the year round. Here for the first time since 
landing were we made aware of our foreign 
nationality by the crowd of small children follow- 
ing and staring. In this park is the Government 
Museum, a large brick building, light, airy, and 
well arranged. The rooms devoted to lacquer 
are especially interesting, of which certain speci- 
mens are of very great beauty. 

I had a long ride from Ueno Park to my 
friend's house, winding and twisting through 
many narrow streets till I began to think my 



92 West and by East 

coolie had intentionally or unintentionally lost 
his way. However, at length we turned into a 
small courtyard before a house which, for Japan, 
was quite large. I found my host — clad in native 
dress, which he wears at home because of its com- 
fort — waiting at the threshold. He furnished me 
with felt slippers to wear instead of boots, and 
then took me in and introduced me to his brother, 
who was also in Japanese dress and who spoke 
hardly any English, and to a young professor of 
the Tokio University, wearing European clothes. 
I discovered afterwards that he was M.A., Oxon. ; 
M.A., Ph.D., Leipsic. Madame la Baronne I 
never saw, either because she spoke no English, 
or because some traces of the semi-Oriental 
seclusion of one's womenkind still survived in 
the household. Though the house itself was 
thoroughly Japanese, the three downstairs rooms 
contained a good deal of European furniture. 
There were sofas and tables and chairs, and book- 
cases full of English books, side by side with 
Japanese bronzes, kakemonos, and brocades. 
Framed photographs of Oxford groups hung on 
the paper walls. The tiffin was excellent, even 
elaborate. The servants were the only thing that 
recalled one to Japan. I had wondered on my 
way to the house if the cooking would be Japan- 
ese, and had half hoped it would. As I learnt 
afterwards, it was as well for me it was not, or 



Tokio 93 

the hearty appetite I arrived with would have 
also departed with me unabated. 

After tiffin I was shown some photos which my 
host's brother had taken — principally of the Baron 
in every variety of costume. He evidently was an 
expert photographer. Before I left my friend 
showed me his garden — the joy of his heart, but 
very small according to our ideas — and the upper 
part of the house. I then saw to what the ex- 
pression, ** pure native style," referred, for the 
bedrooms were furnished with little else than a 
vase of flowers. 

The rest of the afternoon I spent with Mr. 
Montreal in Naka-dori, a street full of small curio 
shops. We strolled from one shop to another 
with the patient Matsuda at our elbow, the rick- 
shaws following, and a great accompanying train 
of children. At each shop we entered through 
the open front and took our seat upon the floor, 
which is raised about eighteen inches above the 
pavement. The proprietor sat in a clear space 
surrounded by a circle of his wares reaching from 
floor to ceiling — like a spider in his web. If we 
fancied anything he reached it down for our in- 
spection, and if he thought we really meant 
business he sent his boy to the back regions, 
where in Japanese shops the best things always 
lie hidden. The boy presently returned with his 
arms full of neat wooden boxes. From the boxes 



94 West and by East 

came rolls and bags of brocade and silk, and from 
them the choice treasures of the establishment. 
Then ensued endless chaffering, ending in nine 
cases out of ten in no business done. 

The crowd of children watched all these pro- 
ceedings with keen interest. For their benefit 
Mr. Montreal did some simple tricks of sleight- 
of-hand. The apparent swallowing of a coin was 
too much for one small boy who was carrying on 
his back another not much smaller. He turned 
and fled precipitately, evidently convinced that 
we were more, or less, than human. 

Friday was a day of pouring rain. The moats 
ran swift and turbid under the bridges and threat- 
ened to overflow their banks. The rickshawmen 
paddled about ankle-deep in mud and water. 
We ventured out to see the workshops of a 
famous bronze-worker, but saw little for our 
pains. The Baron came to tiffin with us at the 
hotel, this time in a frock coat, and in the after- 
noon we took the train for Yokohama, which 
seemed to us now an old familiar friend. 



CHAPTER VIII 

MATSUDA EISITERTAINS 

WE had now returned to our base of supplies, 
and spent Saturday in shopping, visiting 
the bank, inquiring for letters, and paying calls. 

On Sunday I went up the Bluff for what was 
called tiffin, but was really the regulation middle- 
day English Sunday dinner. There was the 
English dining-room and the roast beef, and a 
contingent of little boys in sailor suits, full of 
the idea of going Home where they had never 
been. Even the Japanese boy and the curry 
after the beef could hardly persuade me for a 
time that I was not back in England. 

When I rejoined my party at the hotel we went 
first to secure berths at the steamship office on a 
steamer leaving the next day for Kob6, as the 
railway was still broken. Matsuda was very 
anxious that we should then come to his house 
for tea. He accordingly slipped off down a side 
street after instructing our coolies to take us by a 
roundabout route, and was by this manoeuvre 
able to be waiting on his own threshold wreathed 

95 



96 West and by East 

in smiles to welcome us. The house was a two- 
storied one, of a fair size, as such things go in 
Japan. Extreme simplicity and refinement were 
everywhere noticeable. A couple of painted 
scrolls on the walls, a vase of flowers in a recess, 
a frieze between the rooms of cryptomeria wood 
so long buried that the softer parts had rotted 
away, leaving a sort of natural fretwork, — these 
were almost the only decorations, or, indeed, 
furniture, of the lower floor. Matsuda intro- 
duced us to his wife, a lady of uncertain age and 
subdued demeanour, his daughter, a pretty girl 
of about sixteen, and a small son who, I fancy, 
was virtual, if not titular, head of the household. 
He showed us his garden behind, a plot of 
ground probably not more than ten feet by 
twenty, backed by a high wall. Yet in it was 
room found for an elaborate arrangement of 
stepping-stones, several pine trees, one or two 
large boulders, and a stone lantern — these are 
the main constituents of the average Japanese gar- 
den, with, if possible, water and goldfish added. 
At one end of the garden the house projected 
a tiny room — the ** tea-ceremony " room. Now 
to have a ** tea-ceremony '* room seems in Japan 
to confer a social distinction such as the posses- 
sion of a haunted room might give in England. 
In all Yokohama there are but three. Just what 
the ** tea-ceremony " is it is difficult to ascertain. 



Matsuda Entertains 97 

It appears to include the whole code of good 
manners and household management. Its rules 
govern the arrangement of flowers — no casual 
matter, as each month has its own flower, and 
each flower a vase appropriate in size, shape, and 
material. It teaches the graceful way to kneel 
down or to get up. Every action of a well-bred 
Japanese is governed by elaborate rules of eti- 
quette founded on immemorial custom, but the 
end and aim of them all is a refined simplicity. 
So perfectly is this object attained that it takes 
some time to find out that this simplicity is highly 
artificial, and not spontaneous. 

This Japanese characteristic is strikingly illus- 
trated in the ** tea-ceremony.'' This is the 
actual ceremonial drinking of tea from which 
the whole system takes its name. Matsuda's 
daughter performed some parts of it for us. I 
think the full course of study required to become 
perfect in all points is five years, and she had 
been but three. Matsuda often told us as the 
ceremony progressed how she had laid herself 
open to the ridicule of the initiated by some 
trifling error of omission or commission. Prob- 
ably to us the action had seemed quite accidental 
and unimportant. 

The size and shape of the room are fixed within 
certain limits; at the best it is a tiny room. Part 
of the ceiling is flat and part sloping. The sloping 



98 West and by East 

part IS of bamboo, and on the under side the 
bamboos, instead of lying horizontal and parallel, 
run together in apparent confusion. But once a 
Shogun on his travels stopped at a house where 
he expressed a desire for a cup of tea with all 
the due ceremony. For so exalted a personage 
a new room had to be built, and as the request 
was apparently unexpected, the carpenters in 
their haste fastened the bamboos awry. Luckily, 
the effect pleased the great man, so that ever 
since all tea-roonas, if properly built, imitate it. 
The floor, of course, is matted, and destitute of 
furniture. There are three doors, one from the 
house used by the tea-maker, a very low one 
from the garden for the host, and beside it a 
larger one for his honoured guests. The way to 
it is by the stepping-stones, which, taken in a cer- 
tain order, lead first to a boulder with a hollow in it 
full of water where the guest may wash his hands, 
and then to the tea-room. We were allowed to 
use the honourable doorway, though, as a matter 
of fact, owing to the limited size of the room, 
Mr. Montreal and I never got more than half- 
way in. 

The ceremony is lengthy, and varies with the 
time of the year, each of the four seasons requir- 
ing a different equipage of kettles, cups, etc. 
To describe it all accurately would need an ex- 
pert, but the outlines are these : The brazier of 



Matsuda Entertains 99 

live coals is ready in the room, but almost all the 
other things have to be brought in one by one. 
The fire is stirred and the kettle put on to boil. 
The kettle is lifted by rings which fit into hooks 
at either side, and when not in use are laid in 
their particular place. The cups are not at all 
like the common ideal of Japanese teacups. 
They are really fair-sized bowls of glazed earthen- 
ware, not quite round, but moulded so as to fit 
easily the drinker's encircling hands. The tea is 
in a tiny jar shaped like the oil jars in the story 
of the Forty Thieves. It is wrapped in a little 
silk bag with a silk cord, and is stopped with a 
tiny lid. These adjuncts are brought in while 
the water is being heated, and when the water is 
hot a little tea is taken from the jar and put into 
the bowl by a slender bamboo spoon, as nothing 
of metal may touch it. The tea itself — the 
centre and cause of all this ritual — is a fine, light- 
brown powder. The hot water is poured on to 
the tea in the bowl direct, and then the mixture 
is beaten up with a bamboo implement like a 
shaving-brush. The tea is then ready to drink, 
and the bowl passes round the circle. Each per- 
son in turn drinks from it. If more than one cup 
of tea is needed another bowl will be used, but 
each bowl goes the full round. Matsuda's wife 
was kind enough to show us the proper way to 
hold the cup, the proper way to drink, and the 



loo West and by East 

proper bows to make. Before the tea is ready 
each person is provided with a paper napkin and 
a small, sweet rice-cake. If he feels disposed to 
eat his cake he does so when the tea is served ; if 
not, he keeps it wrapped in his paper napkin. 
But to refuse one altogether is accounted rude. 
When the tea is drunk the maker takes away, one 
by one, the implements with the same pomp with 
which they entered, but some at least are left for 
a while that the company may examine them and 
comment on their beauty. This is expected of 
one's politeness, and it must be a relief to have 
the chance of saying anything after the solemn 
silence in which the whole ceremony must be 
watched. These bare facts may make the whole 
thing appear stupid. As a matter of fact it is most 
dainty and charming. To begin with, it was per- 
formed by a pretty Japanese girl, there was no 
noise and no haste, and all the movements were 
graceful. So many steps must be taken at each 
entrance, and then kneel down ; so many steps at 
each exit. Each thing must come in in proper 
order. Each thing must be wiped before and 
after using with a little square of red silk, and 
this itself must be stretched and then folded in 
just the exact way after each use, and then 
tucked into the girdle. Perhaps it casts a kind 
of spell over the spectator, the charm ** of woven 
paces and of waving hands." Drinking of tea 



Matsuda Entertains loi 

with all this ceremony is a form of hospitality in 
Japan, and could only be tolerated in such a 
country, where everyone is artistic and no one 
values time. 

When we had seen parts of the ceremony ap- 
propriate to various seasons we returned to the 
house, and there to our surprise found an ortho- 
dox afternoon tea awaiting us — painted cups 
with handles, silver spoons, each topped with a 
model of an ancient statue, the gift of a former 
employer, sponge cake, and tea in a teapot. The 
table was only about eight inches high, and we 
sat around it on cushions on the floor. After a 
while lights were brought in, in paper lanterns 
standing about three feet high. Matsuda brought 
out for our inspection his choice treasures of lac- 
quer and pottery. Like a true Japanese, he kept 
them in their boxes and silk wrappings, piled in a 
closet whence they only emerged on great oc- 
casions. His daughter added to our obligations 
towards her by playing on the koto, a sort of 
zither, perhaps five feet long, with twelve or 
thirteen strings. The player wears ivory shields 
on the thumb and first two fingers of the right 
hand and with these strikes the strings, stopping 
with the left hand. The sound is very melod- 
ious, though we could not follow the tune. 

We found the whole visit so fascinating that 
we could hardly persuade ourselves to come 



I02 West and by East 

away. Matsuma thus added to his repertoire 
another role — the charming host. All through 
our visit he treated us not as employers but as 
personal friends, but with no familiarity, with 
perfect politeness but no trace of obsequiousness. 
But when we met next day he was again our 
guide but not our host. Surely the Japanese 
manners are perfect. 



CHAPTER IX 

MIYANOSHITA 

I WAS now beginning to be rather pressed for 
time, so that instead of waiting for the Gaelic 
or the Japanese mail boat, both of which left on 
Tuesday for Kob6, we had engaged berths on a 
Japanese boat sailing on Monday. Matsuda as- 
sured us she was new, just out from England, 
and officered by Europeans. On the latter point 
we were rather particular because Japanese sailors 
have not a good name as regards their obedience 
to officers of their own race. On the Sunday we 
had secured berths very easily, wondering rather 
at the very low sum asked. Our suspicions were 
further aroused when Matsuda told us that the 
steamship people had asked him whether we 
would want European or Japanese food. It 
showed that this boat did not very often take 
Europeans. 

But Monday morning found us and our belong- 
ings on board the hotel launch, threading our 
way in brilliant weather through the shipping of 
the harbour. There seemed every chance of 

103 



I04 West and by East 

a pleasant passage. Its duration varies from 
twenty-four to thirty-six hours, according to the 
speed of the boat. But we passed one by one all 
the steamers with any claim to respectability, and 
finally came alongside of a dirty little steamer of 
some one thousand tons, a regular cargo tramp in 
appearance. She was still receiving cargo, but, 
with only half an hour left till sailing time, showed 
half her propeller above water, — in itself no very 
encouraging sign, for the voyage to Kobe (like 
the Channel crossing) is proverbially choppy. 
The main-deck was horribly dirty, covered with 
scraps of matting from the wrappings of the 
cargo, and with half-naked coolies. Amidships 
was a small upper deck, and under it a deck- 
house in the middle of the ship, an alleyway on 
each side, and then two narrow houses coming 
flush with the bulwarks. In the starboard slip of 
deck-house were our cabins. There were two of 
them, and two berths in each. I suppose there 
were two similar rooms on the port side, so her 
full complement of first-class passengers would 
seem to be eight. The berths were very narrow 
shelves fixed to the side of the ship. The rooms 
were filled with a horrible mixture of smells from 
the engines, the galley, and elsewhere, and were 
intolerably hot. We took one glance at the dis- 
reputable oil-lamp, at the bill of fare pinned up 
behind the door and beginning Pea-soup, at the 



Miyanoshita 105 

upper deck, where a wilderness of boats and ven- 
tilating cowls left only just room for a couple of 
wicker chairs. Then we decided that as we were 
travelling for pleasure even the joy of a new ex- 
perience would not detain us longer on the ship. 
In about five minutes after we had boarded her 
we went over the side again into the launch, 
which was still waiting. Just as we were leaving 
we did see one European officer — the others we 
had seen were Japanese. This one was probably 
an engineer, and was by no means prepossessing. 
Our luggage speedily followed us and a crest- 
fallen guide. We heard afterwards that she was 
really a cargo boat, and that people had felt sur- 
prise at our going in her, but that it was not 
etiquette to interfere with a guide's arrangements. 
Alas, that even a licensed member of the Guides' 
Association should not be infallible! 

But we did not feel our expedition across the 
harbour altogether lost time, because our escape 
from such dirt, confusion, and smells, and from a 
day and night of extreme discomfort, seemed to 
throw a glamour over all the rest of the day. More- 
over, the steamship people returned us our money 
in full without showing the slightest surprise — per- 
haps our reappearance was not wholly unexpected* 

Instead of going to Kob^ we decided — as we 
were all packed up — to go to Miyanoshita. This 
village lies about thirty-five miles from Yoko- 



]o6 West and by East 

hama, and is a favourite resort of the foreign 
residents because of its fine hotel, its natural 
warm baths, beautiful scenery, and comparative 
proximity to Fuji — that coy mountain supposed 
to be visible from Yokohama, but of which we 
had not had a glimpse. 

After lunch we started along the same route 
as we had taken to Kamakura — the Tokaido 
Railway. But now there was bright sunshine, so 
that the country looked much prettier. An hour 
and a half in the train brought us to Kozu, where 
we changed into little two-horse trams, and 
jogged off for another hour. The road was a 
well-made one, crossing from side to side of a 
valley which narrowed rapidly as we steadily as- 
cended. Sometimes we passed long straggling 
villages, in one of which we changed horses. At 
Yumoto of Hakone, not Nikko, where the tram- 
line ended, we took to rickshaws. We had to walk 
some little distance to find them, because a recent 
landslip had carried away a bridge, and the tempo- 
rary way of crossing the stream was not practicable 
for rickshaws. The other members of the party 
were soon put into their traps and trundled off, but 
I thought I should never get mine. The remain- 
ing coolies apparently considered themselves en- 
gaged to some people who were following us, and 
it was only after a tremendous argument, which 
I thought at times would come to blows, that 



Miyanoshita 107 

Matsuda carried the day and I won my seat. 
The road was almost all uphill and often very 
rough, so that each rickshaw had three coolies, 
who lifted it bodily over the inequalities. The 
country was hilly and rather wild, but darkness 
came down before we reached the hotel. Owing 
to the complicated nature of the journey it takes 
some four and a half hours to cover the thirty- 
five miles. 

The hotel Fuji-ya, kept by a Japanese but on 
European lines, is set on the side of a hill. It is 
often said to be the best hotel in Japan. Its 
architecture is a happy mixture of Western and 
native styles, and its success has prompted it to 
send two long, low wings curling and twisting 
down the hillside till they almost meet. So that 
my room in the extreme end of one wing was 
perhaps seventy-five yards from the billiard-room 
in the end of the other wing if I went across the 
garden, but two hundred by way of the house. 
All the doors and windows opened out into en- 
circling corridors, a device which made the rooms 
rather dark, but cool in summer. The way from 
my room to the dining-room lay through the 
kitchen, which seemed to no one but myself in 
the least odd. 

The sights of Miyanoshita are natural and not 
architectural, and the first of them which we 
visited was Lake Hakone. The south end of the 



io8 West and by East 

lake, where the village of Hakone lies, is some 
five or six miles from Miyanoshita. It was a 
pretty walk among the hills, but not very memora- 
ble, except that at one place there is a colossal 
Buddha cut in low relief in the solid rock, and 
at another a splendid view in the direction of 
Tokio can be obtained. In fact, your guides do 
not allow you to proceed till you have obtained 
it. The ladies went in carrying chairs, each with 
four coolies. These are regular armchairs slung 
on two poles, and are more practicable than 
kagos for Europeans. I tried one for a little, but 
found the motion very quick and jolty. Mr. 
Montreal and I tied straw sandals under our 
boots and found them excellent in preventing 
slipping. Matsuda had a kago, but at starting 
walked ahead of it, though when the pull came 
uphill he rode ; walking was not one of his 
accomplishments. 

The path climbed steadily till we came sud- 
denly in view of the lake lying far below us. But 
the hills were covered with threatening clouds, 
and Fuji, the chief glory of the view, absolutely 
invisible. Then we descended abruptly to the 
level of the lake, through the broad, straggling 
village street and past a summer palace of the 
Emperor's. It is built on a peninsula in the lake, 
looks like an overgrown shooting-box, and has 
been disused for years. A short walk along the 



\ 



Miyanoshita 109 

old Tokaido road, where the glory of the crypto- 
meria overhead atoned for the very indifferent 
surface underfoot, brought us to a tea-house on 
the edge of the lake, and tiffin. We, of course, 
had had to stop once or twice at tea-houses en 
route, but this was inevitable on every expedition. 
As at Chuzenji, this was a picnic lunch of pro- 
visions we had brought with us, eaten in a veranda 
upstairs commanding a view of the lake and of 
the clouds, behind which Fuji lay hidden. In 
spite of Matsuda's protests that the path was a 
very bad one, w^e decided to sail down the lake — 
about four miles — and then to walk back by way 
of Ojigoku, or ** Big Hell." Accordingly, after 
tiffin, two sampans were brought round. Into 
one the ladies were put with their chairs, while 
Mr. Montreal and I lay on mats athwartships, 
and owing to the breadth of the beam were quite 
comfortable. In the other boat were the chair 
coolies. We had two rowers and a lateen sail. 
The sampan has a soothing, swaying motion like 
a gondola's, and the hour's sail would have been 
very pleasant if it had not come on to rain fiercely 
when we were about half-way across, which sent 
us creeping under wraps and mats. At the land- 
ing was a tumble-down hut full of smoke from a 
blazing fire, where we waited a little to see if the 
rain would hold up, but as it showed no signs of 
doing so we started off again. The path was 



I lo West and by East 

good, running between fields and rising gently 
till we came to the little bathing village of Ubago. 
Then it degenerated sadly. It became narrow 
and steep, closely overhung on either side with 
dripping bushes. The rain had washed away the 
centre of the path, leaving a deep furrow with 
sides of sloping, slimy mud, so that even with 
straw sandals and the help of friendly stones it 
was difificult to always stand upright. How the 
coolies managed to carry the ladies up without a 
spill I do not know, but they did it. When we 
reached the broad, flat top of the little pass the 
rain had ceased. It is here that the sulphur 
springs begin from which the pass takes its un- 
holy name. We all had to walk, and as Matsuda 
told us fearful tales of how people who had 
wandered ever so little from the right path had 
been scalded to death, we dogged his footsteps 
closely. The scene was uncanny, but not as 
tremendous as its name would imply. Clouds of 
white steam rose from the side of the hill, which 
was covered with slippery white mud. Tiny rills 
pf hot water bubbled up from little cauldrons, 
flowed across our path and down to join the main 
stream running through the valley. The real ex- 
citement was in keeping one's footing on the side 
of the hill on the treacherous mud. After this 
the path again came back to the upper world of 
fields and farms. When we got back to the hotel, 



Miyanoshita 



1 1 1 



as I felt a little stiff, I indulged in one of the hot 
baths for which Miyanoshita is famous. The 
water is naturally warm, and, though medicinal, 
is so little so that one can bathe in it without 
doctor's orders. The manner of bathing is very 
comfortable. The bath-rooms are little wooden 
cubicles, lit by electricity, and divided into two 
parts. The outer part is a dressing-room, and 
from it a doorway leads into the bath part, which 
is on a slightly lower level. The bath is a tank, 
about six feet by three, by two feet six, sunk flush 
with the floor, and full to the brim of warm water, 
so that when one gets in the water flows out over 
the floor, which is specially sloped to allow it to 
drain off. The size of the tank makes the per- 
formance very luxurious, and there seems to be 
no time limit on occupancy. 

On Wednesday morning we went a short walk 
up the main road and across a bridge, and then 
Matsuda, proudly pointing to a small knob of a 
hill appearing over the nearer ranges, exclaimed, 
** That is Fuji.'' We returned contented that we 
had come so far and really seen the peerless 
mountain ; but yet our joy was rather a chastened 
one. On our way to this glorious view we stopped 
at a tea-house — the day was warm and sunny — 
and wandered into a picturesque little garden, all 
stone lanterns and tiny lakes. In the pools were 
many fat carp, some golden and some silver. 



112 West and by East 

They were very tame, and crowded together to 
feed on slices of dry bread. They rushed frantic- 
ally after the floating dainty, driving it before 
them with their noses, jostling and ousting one 
another till the bit of bread was the rapidly moving 
centre of a wild mass of gaping mouths, swishing 
tails, and gleaming sides, like the earth in the 
centre of the Leonids. It is a picture of this 
garden that appears as a frontispiece to this book. 
It is from a photograph by Mr. Montreal, and 
some of the gleams in the water are supposed to 
be the backs of the contending carp. 

In the afternoon a flag was flying before a tea- 
house on top of a hill near the hotel to indicate 
that Fuji was then visible from there. So Mr. 
Montreal and I climbed up by a zigzag path, but 
though the view of the valley was beautiful the 
view of Fuji was hardly better than the one we 
had had in the morning. Later on we did some 
shopping, and I was so engaged in bargaining for 
some saki-cups that I was totally unaware of an 
earthquake. The most characteristic things in 
the Miyanoshita shops are various wooden ar- 
ticles, such as picture-frames, inlaid roughly 
but very effectively with different coloured 
woods. 

The weather seemed settled down now to a 
beautiful sort of Indian summer, and Miyano- 
shita was a pleasant place to linger in. But the 



Miyanoshita 113 

day I had fixed for sailing was rapidly approach- 
ing, and I had still to see Kioto. 

The main line from Yokohama south runs in 
the Hakone district in a semicircle of which 
Miyanoshita is the centre, Kozu, where we had 
left the railway, at one end of the diameter, 
and Gotemba at the other. It was between these 
two stations that the line was broken. It was 
possible, therefore, to go from Miyanoshita over 
the Otome-Toge pass and drop down on the rail- 
way at Gotemba, and so avoid the break alto- 
gether. Trains were being run from Yokohama 
to one side of the break and their passengers and 
baggage transshipped to other trains on the far 
side, and so -sent through to Kioto, but with 
much delay and discomfort. I would thus be able 
to get to Kioto by train, but I did not know how 
long I might have to wait at Gotemba. There 
was a train timed to leave at 9.30 A.M., and this 
I decided I would take on Thursday morning. 
I did not expect it would actually leave before 
11.30, still, in order to reach the station some- 
where near the advertised time, I arranged to 
leave Miyanoshita at 5.30. As there is a fine 
view of Fuji obtainable from the top of the 
Otome-Toge pass, Mr. Montreal agreed to come 
so far with me. So at 4.30 o'clock we were 
called, and at 5 we breakfasted. By the time we 
were ready to start darkness was giving place to 

8 



114 West and by East 

twilight, and a glorious sunrise was preparing. 
Our ponies were brought round — my luggage had 
gone on ahead — and we three mounted and 
started ; Matsuda was to come with me to Go- 
temba and see me safely into the train. 

After a mile or two we turned out of the high 
road up a path which climbed gently along the 
right-hand side of the valley. For the most part 
it was good, but liable to sudden fits of degenera- 
tion, and the ponies had to scramble up among 
great boulders with the saddle at a surprising 
angle. Happily, they were very sure-footed, 
and having no dignity to maintain did not expect 
a well-made road but took anything that came. 

It was a beautiful ride; the morning fresh, 
cool, and still. The sun as it rose cleared the 
sky of the few dappled clouds which had gathered 
in the east, and shone first on the rounded tops 
of the green hills; then, driving the shadows 
slowly down the hillside, shone on our backs and 
glistened in the tall, dew-laden grass and wild 
flowers on either side of the path, and flashed at 
length in the noisy stream at the bottom of the 
valley. We passed a few scattered houses, where 
sleepy Japanese, well wrapped up, were beginning 
to stir on the verandas. At the inevitable tea- 
house grass sandals were tied on the ponies' fore 
feet, a necessary precaution, as the steepest parts 
of the path were often of slippery wet clay. Just 



Miyanoshita 1 1 5 

after this tea-house we crossed a broad grass plain, 
where, Matsuda said, the finest horses and cattle 
in Japan are reared ; according to my observation 
this does not imply anything very wonderful. 
Then came a steep pull of half a mile or so with 
many sharp zigzags. Except in Japan one would 
never dream of riding up such a place, and as a 
matter of fact we walked, as much to salve our 
conscience as to relieve the ponies, for mine at 
least seemed quite happy under me. We met 
several pack-horses with their drivers, and kept a 
pretty sharp lookout for them so that we were 
able to see them in time and give warning, and 
then one of the parties could draw aside where 
the path happened to be a little broader. Other- 
wise we stood a good chance of being swept by 
the great swinging packs off the path into the 
woods and rocks of the hillside. Suddenly we 
came out from some scrubby woods on to the tiny 
plateau at the top, face to face with a view which 
we felt should be enough not only to bring any 
man out of his bed at half-past four in the morn- 
ing but across ten thousand miles of land and sea. 
Behind us was a tumbled country of grass- 
covered hills, — among them on the left Lake 
Hakone, — with a silver strip of sea in the dis- 
tance, and the land near Eynoshima like a cloud 
on the horizon. Sloping down from our feet and 
stretching far away on either hand lay a broad 



1x6 West and by East 

valley, cut up into tiny fields, dotted with in- 
numerable trees and houses, and backed by dis- 
tant broken hills. Directly opposite us Fuji, the 
** peerless mountain," rose in a glorious sweep 
sheer from the valley. In shape it was exactly 
the truncated cone of Japanese art. The beauti- 
ful curves of the sides were unbroken save where 
on the left slope a little hillock projected — a new 
crater thrown up by one of the later eruptions. 
Only a tiny thread or two of snow were left on 
the summit. The sun pouring down from a clear 
sky brought out every detail. There was noth- 
ing to mar the outline, except where a chain of 
tiny clouds lay like a girdle midway between the 
base and summit of the mountain, and served to 
accentuate the height. Exactly above the crater 
hung the full moon, very large, but cold and 
grey, as it neared its setting. It looked like 
some huge projectile just thrown up from the 
mouth of the volcano. 

Fuji, the coy and capricious, no longer wrapped 
in a mantle of clouds, stood revealed to us — a 
glorious sight and a deathless memory. 

But long as I could have lingered in admiration 
I had to press on in case my train should be 
reasonably on time. So I said good-bye to Mr. 
Montreal. He went home to Miyanoshita and 
breakfast, while Matsuda and I began to drop 
down on Gotemba, which lay, as it seemed, at 



Miyanoshita 1 1 7 

our feet. But the farther we went the farther 
there seemed to be to go. On the way down we 
saw hardly any signs of Hfe, except a cavalry 
officer and his orderly, apparently out on a recon- 
naissance. When we arrived on the flat we found 
there was still a considerable distance to go 
through the fields. After passing a village with 
its wrestling-ring we heard an engine whistle, 
but we thought nothing much about it except that 
it showed we were near the railway. What then 
was our amazement to find on reaching the station 
at 9.40 that the whistle had belonged to our own 
train! The authorities had not waited for any 
connection from Yokohama way, but had started 
the train afresh from Gotemba if anything a little 
before its time. Time one way or the other is no 
object in Japan. 

The train I had missed would have got me to 
Kioto about midnight. But as it was I had two 
alternatives left : to stay wasting time in a little 
village where no one spoke English (Matsuda 
must of course go back to Miyanoshita), and 
there was nothing to do, till the next through 
train in the evening, which would land me in 
Kioto next morning; or else to go on at about 
11.30 by a train which took me as far as Nagoya 
that night, where — Matsuda said — there was a 
decent semi-European inn at which foreigners 
were in the habit of stopping, and then by getting 



ii8 West and by East 

up early arrive in Kioto about eleven the next 
day. The latter plan seemed to waste least time 
and afford more amusement, so I decided on it. 

Till the train should arrive we adjourned to the 
tea-house, and Matsuda prepared me a tiffin. 
The food had come from the hotel in the usual 
little wooden boxes. Matsuda obtained an an- 
tique knife and fork and a dingy tumbler, and 
cut up my meat for me. The tea-house would 
not part with its only knife, but the fork they 
would lend me. I carefully cherished it in a 
fragment of newspaper till (according to Mat- 
suda's instructions) I left it at the Grand Hotel, 
Yokohama, with orders for it to be given him, 
when he would return it to its owner; it might 
have been a Crown jewel. The dingy tumbler I 
left — I preferred to drink from the bottle. Have 
I mentioned that there is a most excellent sort 
of lager-beer brewed in Yokohama and found all 
over Japan ? The chief brewer, I believe, is 
German, and the dividends fabulous. 

While we were thus engaged a number of 
soldiers passed us, coming in from exercise. Ac- 
cording to Matsuda, they were part of the troops 
stationed at Tokio, and were practising for the 
autumn manoeuvres. There were, iiiter alia, sev- 
eral field batteries, a mule battery, and, I think, 
a field telegraph corps. The men were tall for 
Japanese, but lacked smartness. A minute or 



Miyanoshita 119 

two afterwards an officer entered the tea-house. 
It was interesting to see him kick off his boots 
before climbing the steep stairs. Evidently his 
European uniform had not altered his native 
habits or manners. Then as the mass of men 
just dismissed poured into the house we trans- 
ferred ourselves to the peace of the station. 

When the train arrived Matsuda put me in, and 
I left him on the platform wreathed in smiles 
and bowing profusely. I was the only European 
and the only first-class passenger in the train, and 
continued so all day. I did see a few Europeans 
in a north-bound train, but felt on the whole that 
I had suddenly severed my connection with the 
Western hemisphere and all its works. I was 
quite an object of interest, and at every station a 
little crowd clattered up to gaze at me. 

The journey was interesting, though at last it 
became wearisome. The train ran sometimes 
among hills terraced for tea culture, sometimes 
through broad straths where the rice harvest 
could be seen in every stage. In some cases the 
fields were still covered with the heavy-eared 
crop, in others lines of shorn roots showed through 
a sea of mud. There was rice in cocks, rice under 
the flail, rice straw drying on high frames or being 
drawn through a sort of large-toothed saw to clean 
it. At one time we skirted the seashore, popping 
in and out of numberless little tunnels. Between 



I20 West and by East 

the tunnels we got glimpses of fishing villages, 
where the whole population seemed to be swarm- 
ing round the sampans drawn high up on the 
beach. As the sun set we crossed the mouth of 
a great lagoon on a long wooden bridge, and it 
was then I lost sight of Fuji. Japanese trains 
travel slowly, and Japanese railways twist and 
turn, and the day had kept very clear, so that 
Fuji had remained a constant background to 
every view, appearing first on one hand and then 
on the other. 

Matsuda had telegraphed to the hotel at Na- 
goya for someone to meet me who spoke Eng- 
lish. I could not help wondering what I should 
do if none such appeared, as this was my first 
journey in Japan by myself. However, I need 
not have worried, for when the train reached 
Nagoya, at about 8.30, there was a man to meet 
me. So I was put into one rickshaw and my 
luggage into another, and was trundled off down 
a fine broad street full of the most appalling 
smells. The hotel was small, but fairly clean 
and comfortable, and a party of three Americans 
came in while I was at dinner. The dining-room 
windows commanded a fine view of the hotel 
bath-house, a curious reminder in the middle of 
my European dinner that I was still in Japan. 
Several curio dealers invaded the room before I 
had finished my meal, and with them I spent a 



Miyanoshita 



121 



pleasant and, to them, more or less profitable 
evening. I had to give up my passport that it 
might be submitted to the police, and felt doubt- 
ful if it would be returned in time for me to catch 
the early train in the morning. But to my relief 
next morning, at my half-past-four breakfast, I 
found it had come back, and not long afterwards 
I returned in two rickshaws down the broad street 
with the appalling smells. My acquaintance with 
Nagoya is therefore very limited. I saw this one 
street once at night and once in the early dawn. 
I felt very proud of myself when I asked for a 
first-class ticket to Kioto in Japanese and actually 
got the right ticket in return. In spite of the 
early hour — the train left at 5.25 A.M. — the 
station was crowded with Japanese travellers. 

As we pulled out of the station I caught a 
glimpse against the growing light in the sky of 
the queer pagoda-like castle of Nagoya, capped 
with two golden dolphins, one of which went to 
the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, and on its return 
was shipwrecked, but after a long immersion 
fished up and restored to its old place. 

The journey to Kioto was much like that of 
the previous day, except that the weather was 
dreary, and we had some pretty glimpses of Lake 
Biwa. 

I reached Kioto about 11 A.M., Friday, October 
15th. 



CHAPTER X 

KIOTO 

KIOTO, the western capital of Japan, was, 
until 1868, the seat of the Mikado's court. 
It remains much more old-fashioned than its 
younger rival, Tokio, the eastern capital. There 
are no tram-cars, and though electric light is 
used it is not very general, and outside each 
house is hung a long paper lantern decorated with 
great characters, which both lights the street and 
tells the number of the house. Begging priests 
may be seen in the streets, under huge, bowl- 
shaped hats that hide their faces, jingling little 
bells as they go from house to house for money. 
The children's heads are still for the most part 
shaved — a custom dying out in Tokio — and also, 
it must be added, often covered with loathsome 
eruptions. 

My hotel lay on the far side of the town across 
the river — a small one — which divides the city. 
Part of my way lay parallel to a canal which runs 
from Lake Biwa through the city and so to Osaka. 
It does not seem to be locked, but has a slio-ht 



Kioto 123 

fall, a rapid current, and only a few inches of 
depth. The heavy-laden barges are towed up 
against the stream by the boatmen, a most 
powerful-looking set of men. But they have all 
their work to make any headway even at the 
slowest pace. All day this slow procession goes 
on through the heart of the city. I suppose the 
barges come down some way and some time, but 
I only saw them go up. 

The Ya-ami Hotel stands on the side of the 
hills which bound on the north the valley in 
which Kioto lies. It is a queer, rambling place, 
built on many levels with many additions, all 
connected by broad covered verandas and bridges, 
by which device nearly all the rooms are in front, 
commanding fine views of Kioto. From my 
windows to the opposite hills, behind which the 
sun set, there stretched the city; in the daytime 
a vast expanse of red-tiled roofs, at night a maze 
of twinkling lights. One tall chimney rose from 
the middle of the red-tiled roofs as a sign of pro- 
gress. It belonged to the electric generating 
house. At night it poured out a dense cloud of 
black smoke which trailed right across the sky. 
There was just such another chimney and trail of 
smoke at Yokohama. At this hotel I saw for the 
first time any considerable number of foreigners 
other than those we had brought on the Empress 
of China, Among the guests at the hotel were 



124 West and by East 

two German families, — apparently come from 
Kob6 for the Sunday, — who indulged in some 
birthday-dinner festivities just as though still in 
the Fatherland. 

At the hotel I found two steamer acquaint- 
ances, two men from Natal, who were seeing the 
world with great thoroughness. They had 
arranged for a Japanese dinner and dance for the 
evening of this day, and were willing that I 
should come too. To occupy the afternoon we 
visited some of the shops for which Kioto is 
famous, and saw gorgeous silks and embroideries, 
pictures in cut velvet, and beautiful damascened 
work at Komai's. But the curio shops of Kioto 
should be visited at the beginning of a trip and 
not towards the end when the available money is 
almost gone. We also saw a religious procession. 
There were many gorgeous palanquins and num- 
bers of men carrying gaily decorated poles under 
whose weight they staggered. But the effect 
was marred by a lack of organisation and by the 
fact that, though the men wore a sort of old- 
fashioned uniform, they nearly all wore the 
ordinary '* bowler " hat. 

Before going out to our dinner at the tea-house 
we took the precaution to make a good dinner at 
our hotel, and we put on evening dress because 
the guide said it created a better impression. 
We were glad to have an opportunity of seeing 



Kioto 125 

what a Japanese dinner was like, but in any case 
it is almost impossible to have a dance without a 
dinner, because the dancing is considered an 
integral part of the meal. 

The entertainment was in a tea-house near the 
hotel, and when we had taken off our shoes we 
were shown up to a brightly lit room on the top 
story. The room was practically empty except 
for four little tables six or eight inches high, and 
four flat cushions. We each sat down (the guide 
had come with us) at a table with our backs to 
the windows, leaving the greater part of the floor 
clear for the geishas. Each table was crowded 
with little dishes and bowls, for almost the whole 
dinner is served at once. There was a lacquered 
bowl full of a soup in which bits of fish and 
chicken floated — this was called foreign soup ; a 
plate of split salt fish, saucers of chicken and 
mushrooms, of boiled fish and string-beans, a 
pile of little omelettes and rice-cakes, and a bowl 
of rice. A second soup — bean soup — appeared a 
little later. The list of dishes does not sound 
unattractive, but the reality was terrible. Every- 
thing had to be cooked till it was soft enough to 
be pulled to pieces with chop-sticks — the only 
instruments we were given — and everything ex- 
cept the rice was tainted with some pungent, 
pervasive flavour which I could not recognise, 
but which — at least in my opinion — reduced every 



126 West and by East 

dish to a common level of nauseousness. We 

m.anaged our chop-sticks vrith m.ore or less dexter- 
ity, picking nrst a little r.sh and then a mush- 
room, a tid bit from the soup to disguise the 
flavour of the mjushroom. and some rice to neu- 
tralise the soup. This vras the way vre were 
instructed to proceed. 

Our drinks^ were tea and saki. The saki was 
served warm, and tasted like very bad sherry and 
water. 

After a little, two solemn vromen. v/ho looked 
about nfty but were more likely twenty-n\'e, 
came in. and took their seats. They formed the 
orchestra, p'aying m.ourniul tunes on the samisen, 
an instrument shaped something like a banjo, but 
whose strings are struck with a very large plec- 
trum. To this accompaniment they sang inter- 
minable .ugubrious sr^ngs. 

The four geishas who entered shortly after the 
orchestra were little girls of tvrelve to fifteen 
years of age. They v/ere gorgeously dressed in 
kimonos, which trailed on the ground so that 
even when the girls danced their feet could hardly 
ever be seen. Their obis, too. v.-ere beautiful. 



^ ■ 1 



ana tneir nair was cec^ea witn a:! m.anner ot gay 
combs and artificial flovrers. Their faces and lips 
were thickly painted. Till the time came for 
them to dance they sat down beside us. They 
were very dainty and polite and willing to be 



Kioto 127 

agreeable. But the barrier of language reduced 
conversation almost entirely to nods and smiles. 
They were always at hand to help us pityingly 
at some awkward crisis in the management of our 
chop-sticks or to point out some dainty there 
seemed a fear we might neglect. By this time we 
were confining ourselves almost exclusively to the 
innocuous rice. Then after we had put from us 
the desire for food and drink we lit Japanese pipes 
by way of experiment, and very shortly after- 
wards cigarettes for enjoyment, and the dancing 
began. 

Some of the dances were for one girl only, 
some for two, and some for all four. Each dance 
tells some complicated story, which the guide 
explained to us. One represented a lion playing 
with a peony — the king of beasts with the king 
of flowers; another a destitute girl journeying 
home to her parents, who must dance to pay her 
way. One of the pas-de-quatre was a dance of 
triumph over the Chinese, and another portrayed 
the flowers of the four seasons. The finale was 
called a ** foreign dance,'' and was chiefly a kind 
of ** grand chain," with a refrain of '* Go-ood-a- 
Bye, Go-ood-a-Bye '' sung by dancers and mu- 
sicians. All the dancing was slow and graceful, 
— posturing, gesticulating, stamping, — but it was 
monotonous to our untrained eyes, and soon 
palled. The performers took it in deadly earnest, 



128 West and by East 

except the last dance, which, as a burlesque of 
Western methods, afforded them great amuse- 
ment, so that their merry giggling almost over- 
came them. 

We were decidedly stiff by the time the enter- 
tainment was over, for we must have been sitting 
on the floor between two and three hours. As the 
rickshaw took me back to the hotel I decided that 
the Western adaptation of ** The Geisha" was an 
improvement on the original, and that one Japan- 
ese dinner was good as an experience, but more 
would be suicide. 

The very limited time I had in Kioto only 
allowed me to take a hasty look at a few of the 
more famous sights. I saw the two great temples, 
Nishi Hongwanji and Higashi Hongwanji. The 
former is an ancient temple and monastery famous 
for its painted walls and doors. Generally a whole 
room is decorated with a single flower or bird or 
some flower and bird together. There is, for in- 
stance, one room of peacocks and cherry trees, 
another of bamboos, another of wild geese. The 
background is always gold, and the colours are 
faded with age, but the decorative effect is excel- 
lent. Here, too, are famous gardens — very small 
to European eyes — where are ponds full of greedy 
carp who struggled madly for a bit of bread. 
Higashi Hongwanji is also very large but quite 
new, built with the offerings in money or kind of 



Kioto 129 

the peasants. Beyond its fine proportions it 
was not interesting, except that — for Japan — it 
was crowded with worshippers. Perhaps this was 
another sign of the *' old-fashionedness '* of 
Kioto. Elsewhere there is a Daibutsu, a huge 
head and shoulders of the god in wood, measur- 
ing fifty-eight feet from the ground, whence the 
shoulders spring, to the crown of the head, and 
its principal merit is its size. It stands under a 
little temple built to shelter it. Just outside is a 
huge bell, fourteen feet high, weighing — it is said 
— sixty-three tons. It is hung in a belfry, and 
has a fine booming sound. The method of 
striking (as is the case with all big bells in Japan) 
is by a log of wood suspended horizontally so as 
just not to touch the rim. The ringer seizes a 
rope hanging from the log, leans all his weight 
backwards, and then lets go, and the log crashes 
against the bell. The merit of the system is that 
if the log is not too big or the ringer too small, 
he can control the force of the blow and conse- 
quently the volume of sound. There is a similar 
but smaller, bell at Nikko, on which the hours 
are struck for all the neighbourhood. 

The most impressive place in Kioto is San-ju- 
san-gen-do, the temple of the 33,333 images of 
Kwannon, the goddess of mercy. Of these one 
thousand are nearly life-size — five feet high, to be 
exact. The full tale is made up of the tiny 



I30 West and by East 

figures on the hands, heads, and halos of the large 
ones. The figures are a dull gold, and stand in 
ten tiers rising to the roof. The building is long 
and narrow, so that there is only a little strip of 
floor left in front of the images. When I was 
there the place was in semi-darkness and prac- 
tically empty, and the dimly seen lines of figures 
stretching away down the vast hall had quite an 
eerie effect. 

On Saturday afternoon I was lucky enough to 
see some wrestling bouts, which, according to my 
rickshaw man, were funeral games, but whether 
in honour of a man just dead or of some long- 
departed hero I could not quite make out. In 
the middle of a large courtyard was a ring of soft 
earth, perhaps five yards in diameter, with a 
slightly raised rim. Over it was stretched an 
awning, and all around the audience, principally of 
men and boys, sat and stood, or clustered on any 
roof or wall which commanded a good view. On 
one side of the courtyard was a small altar, and 
just round the edge of the ring the wrestlers 
squatted to wait their turn. The master of cere- 
monies was a young man in an old-fashioned 
costume with great projecting epaulettes, and in 
his hand a sort of fan which was used as a start- 
ing signal. 

I saw a number of bouts wrestled. Like the 
evacuation of Crete, the preliminaries took so 



Kioto 131 

long and were so wearisome that the event itself 
passed almost unnoticed in the twinkling of an 
eye. In each bout one combatant came from 
each side of the ring. They wore only a loin 
cloth with a broad belt from which hung a long 
fringe. The more noted of them wore their hair 
in the old fashion, grown long and then tied in a 
queue which was fastened on top of the head, the 
general effect being very ladylike. Some were 
very scraggy, but the majority fat, and one enor- 
mously so. For Japanese they were distinctly 
tall. They always wasted a great deal of time in 
a kind of stately prancing to show their muscles 
and test their suppleness. Then a mouthful of 
rice or water, and then more strutting. Perhaps 
then they were ready to take position in the 
middle of the ring within arm's length of each 
other, stooping forward ready to spring. Then 
suddenly they again stood upright, and the whole 
programme was repeated, and at the second 
attempt they would get as far as gripping, then 
smiling and disengaging. As a rule there were 
three or four false starts in each bout, and when 
they really got to grips, holding on to each other's 
belt, the fall generally came in a few seconds. 
One or two rounds lasted longer and were really 
exciting, evoking great applause. In one case a 
man simply bustled his opponent out of the ring 
with his open hands without ever coming to grips, 



132 West and by East 

and this counted as a victory. When one set of 
competitors was finished the altar was brought 
into the ring and all the wrestlers appeared in 
magnificent aprons which fell stiff with gold em- 
broidery to the ground. They made obeisance 
and danced a short and solemn dance ; then, in 
order of merit, beginning with the man so far the 
victor, they advanced one by one to the altar, 
bowed low, and retired. When the last man had 
so done the altar was removed and the wrestling 
began again. How long it continued I do not 
know; they seemed no nearer finishing when I 
left than when I arrived. 

On Sunday the four of us went by rickshaw 
to Lake Bivva. It was about eight or ten miles 
distant, the way lying along the Tokaido, one 
of the ancient highways. It was a fine broad 
road, though rather bumpy as to surface ; 
thronged with foot-passengers and heavy-laden 
little two-wheeled carts pushed or pulled by de- 
graded-looking coolies— men, boys, and women. 
We trotted through several villages straggling 
along the roadside, and finally a long descent 
through Otsu brought us to the level of the lake. 
Here we left our rickshaws and climbed up to a 
temple with a terrace whence we got a fine view 
of the lake, and then down by flights of grey 
stone steps through giant cryptomeria to a gate 
where the rickshaws met us. We jogged along 



Kioto 133 

for another couple of miles down a straight, flat, 
white road through fields where, among other 
things, we saw cotton growing, to Karasaki with 
its pine tree, which is said to be the largest in the 
world. It certainly is not the tallest, though 
perhaps it may be the largest in length of limb or 
cubic content. It grows right on the edge of the 
lake, guarded by a semicircular retaining-wall. 
It is getting decrepit, but is elaborately cared for, 
its spreading branches being upheld by a multi- 
tude of poles, so that from a distance there seems 
to be not one tree but a grove. Over one deli- 
cate spot a little roof is built. These precautions, 
I suppose, are necessary, but they hide the pro- 
portions of the tree and spoil the effect of its size. 
We were a good deal bothered here by begging 
children, a fact I mention because so far, except- 
ing by a few miserable old women or women 
with children, we had been treated as distin- 
guished strangers and not as possible benefactors. 

We hired a sampan to while away the time till 
tiffin, and were rowed a little way down the lake. 
The blue waters of the lake and the surrounding 
low, green hills were bathed in brilliant sunshine, 
but I think as the sampan swayed gently on its 
way the view grew dim before our eyes. 

When hunger drove us back to land we found 
the tiffin we had brought with us ready in the 
upper room of a tea-house near the great tree. 



134 West and by East 

All around were fields of rice or corn, ripe, or 
nearly so. To scare the birds from the crops, 
long cords radiated from the tea-house in all 
directions. They were carried through loops 
fastened to bamboo poles, and ended each in a 
bunch of wooden clappers; so that if the owner 
of the tea-house saw any corner of his fields par- 
ticularly infested with birds he could pull the 
cord which commanded that special district, 
cause the clappers to sound, and drive the rob- 
bers to another feeding-ground. This perform- 
ance occurred several times during tiffin. 

On our way back, as we were bowling merrily 
down-hill with two coolies to each rickshaw, the 
axle of the rickshaw just before mine, carrying 
one of the men from Natal, snapped suddenly. 
The rickshaw made a couple of wild bounds, 
ploughing up the road with the broken stump, 
and finally deposited the man from Natal and the 
rickshaw-coolie in the dust. Happily the dust 
was deep and soft, and neither of them was hurt 
in spite of the extreme suddenness of the stop- 
page. A new rickshaw was soon obtained in the 
village, and so we came to Kioto before sundown. 

I had tried to get a permit to see the Imperial 
Palace at Kioto, but in vain. The people at the 
Consulate at Yokohama had expressed their in- 
ability and referred us to the Legation at Tokio. 
Thither Mr. Montreal and I had gone. But we 



Kioto 135 

were told that the minister would not ask for 
these permits except for personal friends, travel- 
lers bringing letters of introduction to him, or 
distinguished strangers. As we could not bring 
ourselves under any of these three heads we had 
to retire from the Legation unsatisfied. My 
Japanese friend, whose uncle occupied a high 
position at court, next made an attempt on my 
behalf, but he was told that at that season of the 
year permission was given to foreign royalties 
only. In the present enlightened condition of 
Japan it seemed useless to try to bring ourselves 
under this head, and we abandoned the attempt, 
consoling ourselves with the reflection that, after 
all, the palace might not be worth seeing. On 
the other hand the fact remains that two young 
American fellow-passengers secured permits by 
merely going to the United States Consulate at 
Yokohama, which forwarded their request to 
Tokio. 

On Monday morning I rode round the tall white 
tile-roofed walls of the palace gardens, a melan- 
choly substitute for a sight of the interior glories 
which Murray describes. I also went to the tem- 
ple of Kiomizu, which lies on the hillside at 
the other end of the city, far from the palace. 
A very steep and narrow street winds up to it, 
lined with booths crammed and overflowing with 
all manner of tiny china toys, people, animals. 



136 West and by East 

and reptiles, especially frogs made to float in 
water. There is at the top one of the few 
Japanese pagodas. A steep and rather cranky 
staircase leads to the roof, from which there is a 
fine view of the far-stretching city. The temple 
itself is built on the extreme edge of a wooded 
ravine, in fact partly over the edge, supported on 
trestle-work built out on the hillside. It is not 
remarkable except for its exceeding plainness 
and solidity, due either to its age or to an affected 
archaism. The floor is bare, and the huge round 
wooden pillars innocent of paint or lacquer. The 
interior is hung with rather gaudy framed pictures 
— votive offerings I believe. At the entrance are 
the tables of the money-changers, where you may 
get your sens changed for rins — little coins with 
square holes, which run ten to the sen or twenty 
to the penny, nominally. By their means the 
worshipper can throw a contribution into the col- 
lecting-box — whose yawning mouth is always well 
in the forefront of a temple — without serious 
inconvenience. 

At half-past two, or a little later, for we had 
to wait till some Japanese prince and suite had de- 
trained, the two men from Natal and myself started 
for the north. They only went as far as Nagoya, 
which we reached about sunset. I went on to 
Yokohama, arriving there at eight o'clock in the 
morning — 310 miles in something over seventeen 



Kioto 137 

hours. It was an uncomfortable journey, for the 
Japanese railways have no sleeping-carriages. I 
would not think of mentioning this except that 
Japan has progressed so amazingly that one is led 
to expect too much. The ordinary carriage was so 
crowded that I could not put my feet up, and the 
light was too dim to read by. In the early morn- 
ing we caught uncertain glimpses of Fuji through 
its wrappings of grey cloud. Soon after this 
we crossed at a foot pace the temporary bridge 
erected in place of the one the freshet of some 
weeks before had destroyed. It was a matter of 
peculiar relief to me to get over it in safety, be- 
cause I had feared that some untoward circum- 
stance might have again blocked the line. I 
had not taken very much money to Kioto. The 
shops had charmed from me more than I had 
reckoned on, and as there was no bank my letter 
of credit was useless. So I found myself in very 
shallow water, and any delay on the way back to 
the base of supplies would have been serious. 
As I had no guide I could not use the vernacular 
to help me, and with little money that universal 
language also would have failed. As the bridge 
happily stood firm I arrived at the familiar Grand 
Hotel on Tuesday morning, and after paying my 
rickshawmen was still the proud possessor of one 
yen. 

After a bath, breakfast, and a visit to the bank. 



138 West and by East 

I caught a train about eleven to Tokio, where I 
had a few last things to do. Going to the Im- 
perial Hotel for lunch, I found there an Oxford 
man who had crossed by the Empress of China, 
and had since been travelling by rickshaw along 
one of the great roads, sleeping in tea-houses, 
and generally lost to the world, under the charge 
of an autocratic guide. 

After tiffin we went first to the shop of Nami- 
kawa, a famous maker of cloisonne. His ware is 
quite different from those of other makers, and 
is, I think, much more beautiful. As a rule his 
pieces are small, the background a soft grey, and 
the decoration confined to a spray of flowers or a 
few birds, drawn and coloured most naturally and 
most daintily. The wiring is almost invisible, 
and in some parts of the designs Namikawa, by 
some method of his own, dispenses with wires 
altogether. I bought a little flat box with a 
couple of sprays of white flowers and green leaves 
and a cloudy full moon on a background of grey. 
In this the pattern is outlined in wire except the 
moon and the w^hite flowers. As every piece is 
signed by Namikawa, and as he will not repeat 
himself, it will be easily seen that, as generally 
happens, this severe simplicity is really the 
height of luxury. When I was in Tokio before 
I had looked and longed, but with unusual prud- 
ence refrained from buying. Now I thought I 



Kioto 139 

might indulge my fancy, and thereby hangs a 
tale of a fur coat which never was constructed. 
When I was in Nikko I was much attracted by 
the furs sold there, and hardly anywhere else in 
Japan. The prices asked — or, rather, the prices 
that would be accepted — were very cheap, and I 
thought that by buying the furs there and having 
the coat made by a Chinamian at Yokohama I 
might get a cheap coat and also a fairly good 
one, v/hich would be very useful in America and 
Canada, and on the North Atlantic. So I invested 
in otter skins for the outside trimmings and grey 
mountain beaver for the lining, and carried them 
to Yokohama in triumph. But there the trouble 
began. First the tailor said six or seven more 
skins were absolutely necessary. Then Mr. Mont- 
real, who was of course a connoisseur in fur 
coats, looked askance at the tailor's cloth and 
patterns. And finally the residents at Yokohama 
told me that probably the skins were not properly 
cured, and that certainly I would not venture to 
wear Yokohama tailoring outside of Yokohama. 
So my visions of posing as a Russian prince lost 
'their glamour, and in disgust I sold the skins to 
the Chinese tailor at an alarming sacrifice, but 
yet for enough to buy a piece of Namikawa's 
work. Thus the skins were changed for clois- 
onne, and we all were happy, especially the 
tailor. 



I40 West and by East 

From Namikawa's we went a weary distance to 
Asakusa, one of the suburbs of Tokio, where 
there are a popular temple and still more popular 
public gardens. It is a favourite holiday resort, 
and I fancy there are generally some people holi- 
day-making there. The gardens show all the in- 
genuity for which Japanese gardeners are famous. 
Not only were there numbers of dwarfed trees, 
but the chrysanthemums, with which the florists' 
stalls were just beginning to light up the city 
streets, were here trained into all manner of fan- 
tastic forms. The plants were grown on frames 
in the shapes of men and women, to which carved 
and painted heads, hands, and feet were added. 
They were of the small, close-flowering variety, 
so that when the flowers were all out the mani- 
kins were clothed in complete suits of purple, 
white, or yellow blossoms. Sometimes two plants 
were trained over the same frame so that the 
figure might have a purple upper garment and 
white skirts. The figures thus clothed Avere dis- 
posed in appropriate attitudes with appropriate 
scenery so as to represent an episode from some 
Japanese story. Though the plants were actually 
growing, yet the stem was always so ingeniously 
hidden that it was quite possible to forget the 
fact and to think the figures clothed in some new 
sort of manufactured material. This, I suppose, 
was the impression the gardener hoped to convey. 



Kioto 141 

He is certainly much more successful in the art 
whose highest aim is to conceal nature than his 
English predecessor who cut yew trees into pea- 
cocks, but perhaps equally misguided. One of 
these groups represented a gigantic figure stand- 
ing before a painted bridge and with a huge 
sword slashing at a much smaller figure, which 
was suspended in the top corner of the scene in 
the act of leaping the horizontal sweep of the 
weapon. It is an episode from the Japanese ver- 
sion of '*Jack the Giant Killer," and represents the 
first moment when the giant's power is foiled by 
the ingenuity and activity of Jack — the beginning 
of the colossus's end. But besides the legitimate 
attractions of a garden these grounds are full of 
innumerable other delights, such as theatres and 
acrobats. We went to see the latter perform, 
and were disappointed to find it on the whole an 
inferior copy of similar European shows. In one 
corner a brass band, in a burlesque imitation of 
an English uniform, played The Man that Broke 
the Bank at Monte Carlo, I would rather not 
further recall that part of the entertainment. 
The only performance that was new to me then 
was one which I have since seen elsewhere, when 
it was called the *' bamboo shoulder perch act." 
A very miserable-looking little boy climbed up a 
bamboo pole, some eight feet high, using both 
hands and feet like a monkey. The pole was 



142 West and by East 

then slowly raised and the lower end placed on 
the shoulder of a young girl, and for some ten 
minutes or so the small boy performed all manner 
of gymnastics on the top of the pole thus bal- 
anced. He was helped by a loop of cord tied a 
couple of feet from the top. 

From the acrobats I went to say good-bye to 
my Japanese friend, and as the distance was long 
and time short I took a second man to my rick- 
shaw. The speed we made was extraordinary, 
and I was quite surprised to arrive in safety at the 
house without either being myself upset at some 
corner or having knocked down a harmless way- 
farer. As my friend was expecting me, he had 
ready a very acceptable afternoon tea, but I could 
not stay long, as I had to catch my train for 
Yokohama. In the same carriage with me on the 
way back was an Australian who had come to buy 
Japanese toys, fans, and what not for his home 
market. He beguiled the journey with lurid 
tales of Japanese commercial morality and of a 
recent typhoon. 

Arrived at Yokohama, I had just time to dress 
and rush up to the Bluff, very late for dinner. 
The dinner was very kindly got up in my honour, 
so I was informed, but I was by this time too 
tired and sleepy to enjoy it fully. The two 
points of greatest interest were a man who 
sang Hawaiian ditties most sweetly, and the 



Kioto 143 

extraordinary number and variety of drinks which 
my host — an American — pressed upon me. 

The next day, Wednesday, October 30th, was 
my last day in Japan, and appears now as con- 
fused as the landscape seen from an express-train 
window. There was a lengthy visit to the photo- 
grapher's, where I went through his many albums 
and purchased a great number of beautifully 
coloured photographs for a very moderate sum. 
Then I went to a shop in the native quarter and 
returned like a needle in a bundle of hay, so hid- 
den was I by a grass rain-cloak and sundry great 
straw hats. There were many other last purchases 
to make and calls to pay, and all the evening and 
part of the next morning were consumed in pack- 
ing and in sorting out my curios. Most of these 
I sent to a forwarding agent, who packed and 
shipped them direct home for me, a convenient 
and safe way of sending them, if a very slow one. 
Perhaps an earthquake that occurred this morning 
may have added to my feeling of confusion. It 
was the most violent I felt. My room was on 
the second floor of the hotel, — the top floor, — and 
the window, whence I had just obtained the first 
view of Fuji that I had had in Yokohama, al- 
though the mountain is supposed always to be 
visible from there, looked on to the roof of a two- 
storied wing of the hotel. There came suddenly 
a violent jolt, and I thought a heavy box had 



144 West and by East 

been dropped outside my door. But looking out 
of the window I saw the roof outside straining 
and swaying, and realised that there had been an 
earthquake. The feeling was very similar to that 
experienced when an especially big head sea 
strikes a labouring ship on a stormy night so that 
she is brought up with a sudden shock and then 
lies for a moment quivering. 

On Thursday, about two o'clock, I embarked 
on the launch, and was put aboard the Coptic, a 
White Star steamer under charter to the Oriental 
& Occidental S. S. Co. Some little delay was 
caused by waiting for the mails, and then we 
started down the bay in beautiful weather. At 
the mouth of the bay we met the City of Pekin 
entering harbour, bringing for some of us letters 
which we thus missed by a few hours and must 
now wait weeks for. Before the sun set Japan 
had sunk behind us in the west, and we had fairly 
started for Honolulu and San Francisco. 



CHAPTER XI 

HOMEWARDS 

THE voyage to San Francisco took seventeen 
days; that is, ten days to Honolulu, where 
we stopped for twelve hours, and then seven days 
on. For the greater part of the time we had the 
north-east trades, and indeed the log showed no 
wind that was westerly or southerly. The Coptic 
carried square-sails on the fore and main masts, 
and these would be set for days at a time without 
any alteration. 

The passenger-list was small, about forty peo- 
ple in all, but then she only can carry about 
fifty. To make up for this we carried a large 
number of Japanese and Chinese steerage, the 
former mostly bound for Honolulu. It was an 
experiment tried for the first time since the war 
to carry Japanese and Chinese together, but it 
seemed to work amicably. 

Among the passengers were several tea mer- 
chants, most of whom cross the Pacific yearly, and 
are therefore old travellersand excellent company, 
so that our company, if small, was very sociable, 
lo 145 



146 West and by East 

Though we did enter the tropics the weather 
kept cloudy and fairly cool ; too cool for the swim- 
ming-tank on deck but not too hot for cricket. 

We reached Honolulu early on Saturday morn- 
ing. I had a letter to the American Minister, 
and he was on the lookout for me. Under his 
direction I drove up to the Punchbowl, a hill be- 
hind the town. From there you get a fine view 
of the little harbour, which is largely an artificial 
one, of the town lying almost hidden among its 
trees, and of the bare hills behind. I afterwards 
lunched with him. All the French windows in 
his house were wide open, so that the ever-blow- 
ing trade-winds could sweep through and keep 
it cool. He gave me strange things to eat, — 
Hawaiian mullet, poi, and breadfruit, — and then 
procured a surf boat for me. This is a long 
and narrow canoe, with a log rigged about four 
feet out on one side to prevent capsizing. Ac- 
cording to instructions, I wore a bathing-suit, 
and a hat to keep the sun off; the water temper- 
ature was about 76°, and that of the air a few 
degrees more. Although the sea looked perfectly 
calm, breakers were rolling up on to the sand, 
slowly and apparently causelessly. They were 
not very big, probably some four or five feet 
high. I got into the canoe, with a native at the 
bow and one in the stern, each of whom was 
armed with a long-handled, leaf-shaped paddle. 



Homewards i47 

Paddling gently out we took each roller with a 
heave up and a sudden drop down until we had 
gone about a quarter of a mile and had reached 
quiet water. Here we turned, and the boatmen 
watched till they saw approaching the little swell 
which their practised eye told them would be- 
come a roller larger than its fellows. Then they 
set off for shore at top speed, and a moment after 
the roller, now fully formed, caught us up. The 
paddling ceased ; the forward man urged the 
canoe on by wild jerks of his body while the 
man in the stern steered her with his paddle. 
The boat tilted at a sharp angle, her bow dug 
into the water and sent up a constant fountain of 
spray. On either hand stretched interminably 
the roaring, foaming slope of the breaker. The 
whole performance was most exhilarating and the 
speed great, but too soon the breaker grew feebler 
and feebler and then receded, letting us fall 
gently on to the sandy beach, when the whole 
performance must be repeated. 

After this I was driven about the city. It 
struck me as like an American country town ex- 
cept for the luxuriant tropical vegetation and 
for one or two fine buildings. My visit was 
under President Dole's rdgimey but the more 
important buildings dated from the time of the 
native monarchy. There was an imposing palace 
on one side of the public square, vis-a-vis an 



148 West and by East 

equally imposing block of government buildings, 
with a statue of one of the native kings in the 
middle of the square. Altogether it was very 
unlike what one used to associate with the Sand- 
wich Islands. The beautiful gardens, full of what 
at home are always considered hothouse plants, — 
crotons, allamandas, bougainvillas, — the luxu- 
riant hedges of hibiscus, the palm trees, and ba- 
nanas, were to me a great source of pleasure and 
delight, for this was my first glimpse of the tropics. 

Finally my host took me down to the steamer, 
and at the dock-gates bought for me sweet-smell- 
ing garlands of flowers, and with these hanging 
about my neck, according to the custom of the 
country, I returned to the ship. 

On the following Saturday, the 6th of Novem- 
ber, — for we made up the seventeenth day by 
repeating a day as we crossed longitude 180°, — we 
woke to find ourselves in the harbour of San 
Francisco, and a few hours after we had passed 
the much -dreaded customs inspection without 
any trouble, and were at the Palace Hotel, Here 
there is a most imposing courtyard, with en- 
circling galleries on each story, and a restaurant 
which, to us just come down from the high seas, 
seemed of a superlative merit. 

The next day I went out to the Cliff House, 
where you can look clear out across the Pacific. 
Close to the shore was the Seal Rock, covered with 



Homewards 149 

brown seals barking like a pack of hounds. A 
French man-of-war had just passed the Golden 
Gate, and as we watched we saw her begin to 
pitch clumsily to the swell, although from where 
we stood the sea looked perfectly calm. I had 
enjoyed my trip to Japan immensely, but yet I 
had no desire to go westwards with her across the 
ocean from which I had come. 

From San Francisco I went for a night to the 
Del Monte Hotel with its wonderful gardens and 
park, then to Los Angeles, and thence directly 
to Chicago, a hot, dusty journey through El 
Paso, Fort Worth, and St. Louis, although the 
train, the ** Sunset Limited,'' was sumptuous. 
After a few days in Chicago, where I was hos- 
pitably entertained, I left for New York in a 
yet more sumptuous train, the ** Pennsylvania 
Limited," which carried besides the more usual 
dining- and sleeping-cars a library, a bath, a 
barber's shop, an observation - car, a lady's 
maid, and a stenographer. On November 19th 
I reached New York, which became my head- 
quarters, whence I made short trips to Boston, 
Baltimore, and other nearer places, and where 
in the intervals I was nearly killed with kind- 
ness. 

On January 20, 1898, I arrived back at Liver- 
pool, in the Teutonic, five months and a day from 
the time I sailed. 



I50 West and by East 

So ended my voyaging. Whether it was right 
to go so far, to return so quickly, and then to 
write this may seem doubtful. My journey was 
no Odyssey, for adventures, like big game, seem 
now to shun the beaten track ; nor are the gods 
and goddesses still as vindictive as of yore. It 
was no Gulliver's travels into remote parts of the 
earth, because the public is nowadays too scien- 
tific. It was simply a pleasure trip, and of such 
a trip this book aims to be a reflection and a 
remembrance. 

EXPLICIT. 



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UBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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